Harry Potter  The Veil of Time
by Cybergades
Summary: As Harry emerges victorious from the final battle he is faced with the horrible truth that nearly all he held dear was gone. With the help of an unlikely ally Harry utilizes an ancient piece of technology to travel back in time. - H/G ship
1. Chapter 1

**Author Notes:**

Just a few quick author notes before the story begins. This Fan fiction is a crossover taking place between the Harry Potter and Stargate Universes. I encourage everyone to give it a chance. The crossover in my opinion has been crafted masterfully and blends the two canon worlds together quite nicely. I think fans of either series will really enjoy it.

At any rate I hope you all enjoy this fiction as much as I have enjoyed writing it so far.

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><p><strong>Harry Potter and the Veil of Time<strong>

Chapter One: The Final Battle

By Cybergades

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><p>A patchwork of clouds covered the still-black sky. Thick banks of mist, like clouds unwilling to confine themselves to the sky above, rolled glacially across the lawns and between the thick ancient trunks of the Forbidden Forest. A waxing moon beamed down from above, partially obscured by the clouds, unwilling to abandon the night to the slowly-cresting wave of purples and golds boiling up through the clouds on the eastern horizon. The warped obsidian mirror of the Black Lake cast a second moon, as though through a curtain of tears, upon the scene. It did not appear, in Harry Potter's mind, to be a particularly good day upon which to die.<p>

The remnants of the winter cold were still in the air, confined these days exclusively to the night hours, and even now retreating before the advancing sun. Still, Harry clung tightly to Ginny's hand, feeling her warmth flow up his arm, the way a first sip of butterbeer would climb its way merrily down your throat. As he exhaled, he watched the wisps of his breath flee from him into the air, and wished that he could join them, wished that he could escape from this place into the ether above…but only for a moment. He knew, in his heart, that he could never live with himself after perpetrating such a betrayal on his friends. Before turning his attention to Ginny again, he caught the flickering gaze of a few fading stars peering through the clouds overhead, and wondered briefly if they were ever visited by a calamity such as Voldemort.

"You're nervous," Ginny said, leaning closer to wrap an arm around him. Harry twisted up one corner of his mouth in what he hoped looked like a casual smirk.

"Been practicing your Legilimency I see," he retorted, and when she chuckled, he leaned in and kissed her gently on the forehead. The smell of her hair brought him fully back to Earth, and cleared his mind of distraction even as it dropped a stone of dread into his stomach.

"Yes," he continued. "I'm nervous. We've been moving towards this for so many years…and even longer before then, before I even realized it. And now that we're on the threshold…" he lapsed into silence.

For a while Ginny seemed unsure of what to say. Harry felt her hand clasping his own, felt her hot breath on his neck, felt the slightest tremble of cold or fear run down her spine, but heard no words of comfort. In a way, it was comforting to have his fears validated.

"I believe in you, Harry Potter," she said at last, almost a whisper.

"You and everyone else," Harry said, a bit too bitingly. He exhaled through his nostrils, blinking sullenly as sunlight began to twinkle through the cracks in the cloud line. Ginny didn't retort, but merely cocked her head to one side, nestling it in the crook of Harry's neck. Harry sighed.

"I guess I believe in me, too," he said, defeated by his own self-resolve.

"You've got the whole D.A. at your back, Harry, and the instructors, and what remains of the Order. This battle isn't as desperate as you seem to think."

Harry thought of all his friends and mentors, throwing themselves to the wolves with smiles on their faces and "Harry Potter!" on their lips. He closed his eyes, squeezing the bridge of his nose, trying to expel the images with darkness and pressure.

"And you've got me," Ginny chided.

The stones in Harry's stomach were multiplying. He saw Ginny, cursed or killed or torn apart by any number of Voldemort's beastly servants.

"Ginny, listen, I-"

"Don't! Don't even think it, Harry Potter, I know what you're about to say."

"The main fighting is going to take place in Hogsmeade," he began pleadingly. "If you just stayed here at the school…"

He felt himself pushed roughly to the cold dewy grass. Ginny Weasley was standing over him now, clenching and un-clenching her fists at her sides.

"Always the saint, Harry, always the martyr! So eager to leap into the jaws of death that you'll push everyone else out of the way to get there! You can't dictate my life, Potter, and if I am…" she paused, her lip quivering, but pressed on, "…if I am to die today than it will be by your side."

Harry thought for a moment, still lying flat on his back. Slowly, he raised himself up to his elbows. Ginny sighed, extending a hand and helping him up.

"Ginny…like it or not, _and believe me I don't_, I am to play a fairly pivotal role in this battle. Voldemort and I…it's got to happen, Ginny, and it's got to happen today, one way or the other. If you're there, in the thick of things…if I have to watch you…" he stopped. The words lodged in his throat, so bitter and vile that he couldn't swallow, couldn't even breathe or blink. He stood like a statue for several seconds, while Ginny's eyes searched his face, trying to divine what was in his heart. Harry blinked at last, closed his eyes, and felt time drag onward in spite of his deepest wishes.

"If I have to watch you die, Ginny," he said, his voice quaking, "it will be the end of me, I'll never last after that. I need you to stay here, at the school. Someone has to take care of the wounded—and there will be wounded—and fend off any surprise attacks if the Death Eaters try to take the school behind us and trap us in the open."

Ginny's eyes roved across Harry's face, trying to find some angle she could press to her advantage. Finally she rushed forward into an embrace, and Harry felt her shaking against him as she shed hidden tears against his chest.

"Oh, Harry, I'm so afraid," she said around her halfhearted sobs. "How am I to know what's happened to you?"

"You'll know when I stroll into the Great Hall with the Army at my back," Harry said, feeling himself swell with bravado he hoped was real. "It's the only way this can happen."

_Liar!_ hissed the voice in his mind, and Harry knew his bravado would be helpful only to her. He would have to carry his terror with him into battle, and hope that it did not destroy him at the first opportunity.

Ginny wiped her eyes and stood back from him, brushing the grass and wrinkles out of her clothes. The sun broke through the clouds behind her, bathing her in its soft golden light. Harry couldn't help but smile.

"Come on then," he said, wrapping an arm around her. "We've got to go get ready and meet with the others."

The pair made their way away from the Lake towards the main building of the castle, while behind them the fog clung to the ground, and the recalcitrant clouds shrouded the sun from view once more.

The Great Hall was a bustle of activity as Harry and Ginny entered, but inevitably, first one and then another noticed Potter's arrival and the assemblage gradually quieted into a staring silence.

"God, I hate it when they do that," Harry whispered. Ginny stifled a chuckle.

"'Arry," Hagrid said with a nod from a corner of the Hall. Harry returned the nod before casting his eyes out among the crowd, reading the insecurity and hope mixed evenly on the faces of his friends and former classmates. He wondered how many of them he would see again in the evening.

"Say something, Harry!" a voice shouted from the back of the crowd.

"Yeah, speech!"

"Speech! Speech!" the scattered cries echoed off the walls, and Harry felt the weight of the crowd's eyes upon him more than ever.

The few students standing near him paced back to give him room, and Harry found himself alone on the stone floor of the Great Hall, with the cloudy skies from outside moving tumultuously overhead. He looked down at his feet. Whose feet were those? The Chosen One? The Boy Who Lived? And whose robes? Whose hands? Whose ridiculous body was this, swollen to bursting with prophecy and foregone doom? For a moment, Harry was struck with the weight of his own cosmic arrogance, and that of Voldemort. He and the Dark Lord were about to march two armies against one another in a clash of violence and fire and death, for the sake of fate, to play out some sort of grand tragedy or drama. Harry's hands trembled and he felt like all the stones in his stomach were about to come up on him. He looked out at his friends, forehead damp with sweat. What a figure he would cut, The Boy Who Lived retching all over the floor of the Great Hall!

Breathing through his nose, Harry forced himself to relax. Voldemort was going to play out this confrontation whether or not Harry was there to participate, and whether or not his heart was in it. The consequences of failure were very real, for him and for everyone else, even the teeming masses of Muggles who had no idea that the tipping point of their fates rested on the fulcrum of one seventeen-year-old boy. If the world is thrust upon your shoulders, he told himself, even if you never asked for it, never wanted it, and had no idea if you were strong enough to hold it, you were at fault if you did not try. So with one final sigh, Harry shouldered the weight, and opened his mouth to speak.

"I don't think I need to tell any of you what we've come through to get here now," he began. The crowd responded with murmurs of agreement.

"Out there," he pointed towards the door of the Hall, "is where it's all going to happen. This will determine the future, not just of the Wizarding world, but of everyone. If you've got Muggle parents, their lives are on the line here, but so are all their Muggle friends', and their children, and…" he trailed off, letting them extrapolate where he was going.

"I'm not trying to scare anyone, I'm just trying to underline what's at stake here, which is _everything_." He punctuated this with a pointed finger.

"A great man once told me that…that we mustn't sink beneath our anguish, but battle on." He let them take a moment to draw conclusions about who that might have been. "Dumbledore was the greatest wizard I have ever known," he said, and continued over the murmurs of assent. "He saw something, in me and in all of us, that for the longest time I couldn't pretend to have seen myself. To be honest, I'm still not entirely sure where he got his confidence. But Albus Dumbledore gave his life so that we could have this moment, and that alone should be reason enough to win this day." Harry was forced to pause here due to the roar of the crowd. He smiled solemnly.

"Fellow members of Dumbledore's Army, I want to thank you for reclaiming this school in its hour of need and driving the servants of Voldemort from it. Three cheers for you all." The requisite cheers were uttered, Harry's own straining voice blessedly engulfed by a crowd of other voices.

"Going forward, know that I do not ask this of any of you. Follow me of your own free will, but do not think of me as some kind of savior or king. I am your friend, and your comrade, and by some twist of fate I am the Boy Who Lived, but I will never presume to rule." No one knew exactly what to say to this, except for a few scattered cries of "We're with you Harry!" or "D.A.!"

"Enjoy each other," Harry added, and his eyes were fixed on Ginny as he spoke. "If you have anything you'd like to say, to anyone, for any reason, say it now, and go into battle with a clear heart."

Harry could hear his heart beating like a drum, even over the applause and cheering. He could even hear it skip a beat when Ginny mouthed _I love you_ to him over the din.

The rest of the day passed as a blur for Harry. He would spend a few moments with Ginny here and there, and would otherwise be caught up in preparing the castle, casting defensive charms (although he was clearly outclassed in this regard by the professors and even some of the other students), or offering words of encouragement to fellow students. Some, including Lavender Brown and Nigel Wolpert, seemed exceptionally shaken, and Harry spent a good deal of time reassuring them of everything from their own wizarding skill to the inevitability of good's triumph over evil, anything he could think of to put their minds more at ease. Often these pep-talks would draw a crowd, and he would find himself scrambling to put together more impromptu speeches, such that he eventually sought out Hermione for a charm to rid him of his headache. He found her and Ron near the main entryway, their heads together, whispering conspiratorially.

"Oi then, how're you two holding up?" he asked, after Hermione had murmured a few words over his aching head.

"Well, you know, facing down our likely deaths, the usual sort of thing," Ron said. Harry managed a halfhearted chuckle at the joke, and Hermione punched Ron in the shoulder.

"Come off it, Ron, what's the use of talking like that?" she said. "Harry, you know, with all the Horcruxes in Hogwarts destroyed, that just leaves-"

"Nagini," Harry confirmed. "I know. And…" but he didn't go on. No sense underscoring the prophecy everyone had already heard. _Neither can live while the other survives_.

"Have you caught a glimpse of Neville anywhere?" Ron said, changing the subject. "Never seen him like this before, you'd never think he was the same pudgy little- Ow! Hermione, quit it!"

Hermione wrung out her hand from the punch. "Ron Weasley, when will you ever learn to keep your mouth closed?" Her smile betrayed the lie in her anger. "It's true, you know, Harry, everyone seems so much more serious, ever since you've been talking to them."

"You should run for Minister when this is all over, Harry, I'm sure it'd be a sweep."

Harry's lip curled involuntarily. "Ugh…politics. Don't even make me think about that, Ron, not today. I'd sooner eat a Blast-Ended Skrewt. Raw."

The trio chuckled at this, and for a moment Harry could pretend that they were just three friends, just three kids having a laugh. But then Professor McGonagall was behind him, placing an icy hand on his shoulder.

"The thestrals have been saddled, Potter. It's time now."

Harry turned to go, but then turned back to his friends.

"I'll…I'll see you guys later?" he offered, somewhat meekly.

Hermione walked forward, hugging him tightly, while Ron could only muster a half-smile and a nervous nod.

"Sure, Harry, sure. Butterbeer's on me."

"How am I supposed to hold onto this thing if I can't even see it?" a Gryffindor second-year complained as Harry watched the thestral he was holding stamp its feet and flap its wings impatiently. Striding forward swiftly, he took the bridle out of the youth's hands.

"Here, don't worry about that," he said, then looked uncomfortably away from the child's worshipping face. "With any luck, you'll never have to catch a good glimpse of one of these."

"You're aware of the plan, Potter?" McGonagall said from behind him. Harry nodded.

"Provide support for the first ranks moving into Hogsmeade, then locate Voldemort as swiftly as possible and…end things," Harry said. The Professor nodded.

"And for goodness' sake, Potter, do be careful. Always keep an eye behind you and a firm grip on your wand."

"Thank you, Professor. For everything."

McGonagall's lips pursed tightly as she nodded, blinking rapidly. Harry turned and mounted his thestral, to give her a chance to wipe the tears out of her eyes. Looking to the other thestrals, he saw Katie Bell, Angelina Johnson, Alicia Spinnet, Padma and Parvati Patil, and Dean Thomas.

"Good to see you guys," he offered somewhat underwhelmingly. "Just like playing Quidditch, eh?" he added to the three ladies from the Gryffindor Quidditch team.

"I just wish we had Fred and George to be our Beaters," Katie said.

"I'm sure they'll be up to something fantastic on the ground," Dean said.

The thestrals stamped their feet as the students gave a moment's pause. Harry finally exhaled a breath he didn't even realize he had been holding. Raising an arm, he pointed towards the skies over Hogsmeade.

"Alright, lads, let's make Dumbledore proud." With a gentle nudge of his heels, he coaxed the thestral off the ground, and the other six followed, making their way into the air over the Hogwarts grounds. They made a low pass over the courtyards and outer grounds, waving to anyone who noticed them. Harry's eyes roved across the grass, looking for Ginny, but he didn't find her. The cheers of their fellows lost on the whipping wind, the seven took wing towards Hogsmeade, into the low-hanging dark clouds that thickly shrouded the sky. Harry took one last look at the feeble sun before plunging towards his dark purpose.

The thestrals bore them onward faithfully, while they clung to their reins tightly; Harry's fingers felt like they were petrified in the freezing wind, but he was at least relieved that there was little chance of him losing his grip. His thoughts moved forward, towards Voldemort—there was no more time for wishing about the past. He could deal with the snake, Nagini, at least he was fairly sure he could. If he was lucky, they could even snipe it from the air, or one of the D.A. members on the ground would put an end to it before he even reached Voldemort. But after that…_Neither can live while the other survives_. Harry swallowed hard, but his mind was drawn back to the present by the sudden movement of clouds up ahead.

A great cloud bank ahead to their left shifted suddenly, crackling with magic as it reformed into the familiar Dark Mark. Along with the serpent erupting from the skull's ethereal mouth came a host of Death Eaters on brooms. Harry was quick to shout "Bank! Bank away!" turning his thestral to the right and sweeping away from the encroaching Death Eaters, the others following his lead. He winced as a bolt of green light streaked over his shoulder before the flight of thestrals entered into a cloud bank. Hoping to lose them, Harry motioned to the Quidditch chasers, watching them break away to the right, then motioned through the cloudy air to the other three as they cut a left, sweeping around to try and locate the Death Eaters in the clouds. Everything was eerily quiet, with only the whistling of the wind in his ears, as Harry strained his eyes to try and locate any sign of movement. Then, out of nowhere, they were upon them, a trio of broom-riders descending from above, forcing the four thestrals to scatter so as not to collide with them in mid-air. Harry wordlessly deflected a hex thrown by one of the wizards, before pointing his wand purposefully at him.

"_Reducto!"_ he shouted. The Death Eater's broom burst into splinters, leaving the wizard to paw uselessly at the open air as he descended into the cloud cover below. With no time for satisfaction, Harry sent his thestral into a roll, trying to sweep over and flank the Death Eaters from the other side.

"One good turn, _Potter!_" One of the remaining pair of Death Eaters cried, his voice distorted and banshee-like in the wind. "_Fera Verto!_" he cried gleefully.

The bolt of magic struck Dean Thomas' Thestral in the wing. The animal let out a high-pitched shriek as its flesh began to warp and shrivel, writhing as it shrank and twisted until it was finally fully transfigured into a metal drinking goblet. Dean Thomas' scream was more human, and far more gut-wrenching, as he clung to the chalice on his descent to the ground. Harry grit his teeth as the wail faded into the air below, before shooting a host of curses and stunning spells at the Death Eaters, shouting with rage as they dodged them all. The Patil sisters, however, fared better, one of them managing to hit the cackling Death Eater with a Stunning Spell, sending him rolling out of control straight through the eye of the spectral skull hanging in the air around them. The remaining Death Eater let out sibilant howl before winging away towards the ground. Harry sent his thestral into a dive, giving chase into the thick clouds, shouting "Regroup with the others!" over his shoulder. The Patil sisters seemed unsure for a moment, but then obeyed, winging into the clouds to assist the Quidditch girls.

Harry's eyes strained to see through the clouds, but he gasped involuntarily when he burst out of them altogether, flying over the rooftops of Hogsmeade. The battle was joined in earnest below him, bolts of hex energy, red flashes of Stunners connecting, and even the sickly green glow of the Death Curse illuminating the buildings below. The Death Eater he was pursuing was nowhere in sight, but Harry had to bank sharply to avoid crashing into a giant's head. With a groan, the beastly figure swung a great club at him, and Harry actually thought he might be pulled off the thestral's back by the great _woosh!_ of air made by the passing weapon.

"_Avis!"_ he shouted, pointing his wand at the giant's enormous face. A flock of doves erupted from the tip of his wand with a sound like cannon fire, fluttering with sudden panic into the giant's face. He dropped the club to the ground with a great _Thud!_, reaching up to try and swat them out of his face.

"_Petrificus Totalus!"_ Harry cried triumphantly, and watched as the giant's enormous legs locked together.

"Half afraid he'd be too big for that to stick…" Harry murmured to himself, watching as the giant, now hopelessly unbalanced, crashed to earth and was immediately set upon by D.A. members, who began tying it to the ground with rope and stakes. He gave a wave and a triumphant holler, but no one seemed to notice.

Harry's exultant cry was cut short by a sudden jerk of his thestral. With a sinking feeling, he knew it had been struck with a curse, and the splash of green light around him only confirmed his suspicions. The lifeless body of the spectral horse plunged towards the ground, taking Harry with it. He braced himself for the impact, but the breath was still driven out of his lungs as the body of the horse struck the roof of one of the village houses. He was thrown from the back of the corpse, skidding violently down the side of the roof and then hurtling to the ground, where he slid through a snowbank—he could swear he felt his ribs crack as he slammed into the wall of a house across the street, gasping and choking for breath. Blinking the stars out of his eyes, he tried to raise himself to his knees, but failed on the first attempt, crashing back onto the painfully frozen ground. As the blurriness of his vision subsided, he recognized the figure standing down the street, the bloodless flesh lightly grasping his old headmaster's wand with pale cold fingers, the nostrils flaring to catch the scent of prey on the wind.

"Do stand up, Harry Potter," Voldemort said, almost cheerfully. "I've had bad luck killing children in the past…perhaps if you at least act like a man this will turn out better for me."


	2. Chapter 2

**Harry Potter and the Veil of Time**

Chapter Two: The Battle Continues

By Cybergades

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><p>Harry clutched his sides, trying to draw air through his agonized throat. Voldemort chuckled, the laughter rumbling in his throat like the purr of some great hunting cat. Harry raised his wand, but the emaciated wizard disarmed him with a simple flick, sending the stick of holly skittering into a snow bank. The boy reached out, but drew his hand back to his ribcage swiftly with a sharp gasp. Voldemort clucked his tongue reproachfully, waving his wand lackadaisically at the various aspects of Harry Potter's failure.<p>

"Now now, Harry, this simply won't do," he said, barely able to contain his sadistic glee within his mock criticism. "You simply standing there like that, like a child whose wet the bed, it's…" he drew a bony finger across the length of his chin, furrowing his brow as though in deep contemplation before waving his hand dismissively. "There's simply no _drama_ in it, you see?"

"If you're waiting for me to beg," Harry rasped painfully. "You could at least pop over to the Hog's Head and get me a butterbeer." He managed a halfhearted laugh, which Voldemort parroted mirthlessly.

"Oh, yes, Harry Potter, ever stolid, ever brave in the face of- _Crucio!_" He dropped his cheerful facade mid-sentence, his lips curling up cruelly as he lashed out with the Elder Wand.

Harry was struck unprepared and dropped back to his knees from his wobbly standing position, screwing his eyes up tightly in an attempt to shut out the terrible pain assailing him from all sides. Through the fog of agony he heard Voldemort's rising laughter.

"Yes, well, I suppose this will have to do. Although I must admit, Potter, I expected so much more from you than for you to simply drop yourself out of the sky on a dead horse."

Harry's back arched in the snow, although he refused to give Voldemort the satisfaction of hearing him scream. In his mind's eye he tried to focus, tried to remember Dumbledore…his parents…his friends…

"'Arry!" came the gruff cry, as though from a great distance. All at once the pain of the Cruciatus Curse seemed to recede from his body. Opening his eyes, Harry raised himself to one knee, looking around cautiously.

Voldemort lay splayed out on the ground, at the tree-trunk feet of Rubeus Hagrid, who was clenching and un-clenching his fists mightily. With a snarl, the Dark Lord scrambled to his feet, only to meet a ham like fist to the face, presumably for a second time. Harry couldn't help but chuckle out loud. From above, he saw the descending thestral of Katie Bell, a pair of Death Eaters in hot pursuit, and his mood quickly hardened. Rushing forward, forcing himself to move through the pain in his chest, he grabbed his wand from where it had fallen in the snow, and fired a stunning spell at one of the dark wizards in pursuit of the black steed. They were only too eager to retaliate, forcing Harry back around the corner of a building and out of range.

"Harry, come on! Get on, quickly!" Katie shouted as her thestral's feet skimmed the snowy ground. Without waiting to hear the plan, Harry dashed towards her, jumping onto the back of the thestral without it ever fully stopping, and gasping out a choked cry of pain as his cracked and bruised ribs were jostled roughly by its take-off. Glancing over his shoulder, Harry saw Hagrid stand his ground, roaring with fury, as the Death Eaters broke away from their pursuit in order to help their Dark Lord. The half-giant's massive frame shrugged off curse after curse, swatting one of the Death Eaters out of the sky as they buzzed low over him.

"Go on, 'Arry, Katie, gerrouta here! I can handle these- argh!"

Hagrid fell thunderously to his knees, his body haloed by red light. Voldemort, now standing and furious, vigorously thrust his hatred into the Cruciatus Curse, and the last thing Harry saw before the thestral carried him out of view was the red light turning to a sickly necromantic green, and Hagrid toppling forward soundlessly into the snow.

Harry tried to catch his breath, his mind racing and his chest burning as he soared over the scene of carnage below him. Katie maneuvered the thestral to avoid the airborne curses of Death Eaters who witnessed their flyover from the ground, while Harry strained his eyes to try and pick out faces he recognized.

"We can't stay like this, it's too dangerous!" Katie shouted, reining in the thestral and causing it to ascend into the foggy clouds overhead.

"Hagrid…" Harry said, his voice almost lost in the wind.

"I know," Katie said. "It's…they got Alicia too."

Harry felt ashamed of himself. He knew this was likely to happen, he knew that it was a child's fantasy to imagine that they would come out of this battle without significant losses. Why was he now paralyzed with remorse?

"I'm going to let you down near the Shrieking Shack," Katie said. "I think there was a group of D.A.'ers there, they could use your help."

Harry nodded, internally slapping himself out of his shock and malaise. There would be time later. Hagrid…Hagrid would have understood.

As they descended out of the clouds Harry gripped his wand with sweating hands. He immediately aimed a disarming spell at a Death Eater, which went wide, dissipating on the snow-patched ground and drawing the masked figure's attention upward. Katie swung the thestral low overhead, and Harry dismounted roughly, hitting the frozen ground and going into a roll, rising immediately to his feet to find himself in the heart of a chaotic magical exchange. Several members of Dumbledore's Army were engaged in a delicate and dexterous battle of spells and ripostes with a handful of Death Eaters. Harry caught a glimpse of Ron near the forefront, casting and deflecting his spells in a manner most uncharacteristically competent. Harry was glad to see that he was alive, but cast his eyes around for Hermione with little success.

"It's Potter!" Shouted one of the Death Eaters, causing Harry to instinctively raise his wand to bat aside an incoming magical bolt, which screamed into the snow, bursting a drift into a cloud of loose snowflakes and steam.

"Expulso!" Harry shouted, pointing his wand at the ground near the Death Eaters' feet. It erupted into chunks of snow and clods of dirt, the force of the explosion knocking several of the wizards off their feet entirely, whereupon they were quickly stunned or paralyzed by other D.A. members.

"Alright, Harry?" Ron said with a wry smile.

"Been better," Harry said. "Where's Hermione?"

"With the group on High Street," Ron said. "They're apparently driving the Death Eaters back towards the edge of the village. We're winning, Harry!" His grin was cut short as he blocked a curse flung by one of the standing Death Eaters. "Cripes, more of them coming up from behind," he said, thrusting his chin out to indicate the handful of approaching figures cloaked in black. Harry readied his wand, searching his mind for a spell to aid him.

"Potter!" Called out a thin, cold voice. One of the Death Eaters' masks melted away, revealing the stern, pale face of Lucius Malfoy. "What have you done with my son?"

"Didn't your precious Draco come out with the rest of the Slytherin slime?" Ron called out. "Guess your purebred priss was a coward after all."

"INSOLENCE!" Lucius shouted, lightning spewing from his wand with a thunderous _crack!_ Ron dove out of the way, but the hissing crackling energy caught Lee Jordan on the shoulder, sending him reeling into the wall of a nearby cottage and driving the breath from his lungs. The sight of one of their enemies falling was like blood in the water for the Death Eaters, who redoubled their efforts, Killing Curses lashing out left and right. Susan Bones fell, blood streaming from her mouth, nose, and eyes, her screams muffled by the fluid in her throat. Harry and Ron worked shoulder to shoulder, each one trying to watch for potential threats to the other.

"Oh! There, Harry, your left!" Ron said, wordlessly disarming a Death Eater with a flick of his wand.

"You're getting better at that," Harry said. "_Incendio!_" Smoke billowed from the slit eyes of a Death Eaters mask as he dropped his wand, trying desperately to try and put out his now-flaming robes and smashing awkwardly into his comrades as he did so.

"Yeah, well, Hermione's been helping me," Ron said.

"You know, I had a feeling you hadn't exactly been cracking the books in your own free time," Harry said, ducking as a spell flew over his head.

"Cheeky, are we?" Ron said, disarming a Death Eater, catching his wand, and snapping it in half with a single motion.

"Only until one of these," Harry began, cut off as he was forced to leap awkwardly out of the way of a green blast of Killing energy. "Only until one of these blasted things finally hits me," he finished, sharing a black-humored chuckle with Ron. What else was there to do but laugh in the face of Death?

Lucius Malfoy deflected or reversed every curse thrown at him, his long white hair whipping violently behind him in the chill wind.

"I will deliver your heart to the Dark Lord, Potter!" he cried, his eyes glinting with malice.

"_Fiendfyre…"_ He murmured evilly, his wand glowing in his hands as though red-hot. Fire erupted from it, as though from the end of a hose, quickly curling back on itself and flickering to and fro like a living thing. Harry and the other D.A. members drew back, transfixed by the horrifying faces and forms twisting and writhing within the flame.

"The fire will consume you, Potter! I will burn the very soul from your body!"

"_Aguamenti!"_ Ron cried, but the blast of water he produced was insufficient to do more than cause a gout of steam to rise from the fire spell, making a catlike hiss that leant an even greater sense of purpose and malice to the growing body of flame. Malfoy's brow furrowed with concentration as he thrust a finger accusingly at Harry Potter. The flames responded immediately, surging forward hungrily.

Harry and the others broke and ran without a second thought. Harry could swear he felt great bestial tongues of fire lapping at his flesh as he ran from the seething beast-flames. Briefly, he wondered if Voldemort would be satisfied with Lucius' offering of the ashes of the Boy Who Lived, or if this would only disappoint him some way, not to be able to see what sort of expression was frozen on his face in the moment of death. The group rounded a corner, the cottage behind them exploding into smoldering splinters, and Harry almost breathed an audible sigh of relief at the sight that greeted him.

"_Finite Maxima!"_ Hermione's authoritative voice seemed to draw the demonic flames to heel like a dog. She stood like a warrior queen at the head of her own group of students, wand held lightly in her outstretched hand, the corner of her mouth turned up in the faintest hint of a smile as her magic undid the advance of Malfoy's spell, the fire wilting like a plant at the first touch of frost. In that moment, Harry felt a slight pang of jealousy for Ron Weasley.

"Mudblood! Blood traitor! Worse than a Squib! Filth!" Malfoy spluttered profanities and expletives behind them. Hermione giggled slightly at the agape faces of Harry, Ron, and the others, tilting her head and offering a slight mocking curtsy.

"At your service, gentlemen," she said, but was drowned out by Lucius Malfoy's pained shriek of "_Bombarba Maxima!_"

"_Protego!_" Harry shouted, almost without thinking. Lucius' curse rebounded off the shimmering wall of energy conjured forth, striking Lucius Malfoy's wand at the tip. The ensuing explosion obscured Lucius from view in a cloud of dirt and dust and snow, some of which was vaporized into steam. When the cloud cleared the majority of Lucius Malfoy lay limply on the broken and mangled patch of earth, small flecks of wand still fluttering to the ground around him. The other Death Eaters faltered, unsure of how to proceed, but the D.A.'ers were quick to capitalize on the pause, stunning several and sending the others fleeing in retreat, eliciting cheers from the students.

"How've you two been faring?" Hermione asked the two boys, brushing the snow off her robes and rubbing fretfully at what looked like blood. "Don't worry, I don't think it's mine," she said, noticing Ron's concerned look.

"Had to slog through about a half-dozen giants," Ron said, the very memory of the struggle seeming to visibly tire him. "Michael Corner and Terry Boot, they…" he stopped, mumbling something unintelligible and shrugging apologetically.

Harry explained his ordeal to the two of them, hoping that Ron would remember something about the giant he had felled, but he shook his head; there were at least a dozen giants joined in battle, and Harry must have assisted another group of students. This gave Harry some comfort though; perhaps there was another group of his friends that was also faring well.

"I hope Katie and the others are alright," Hermione said. "We should have known they would have had wizards in the air as well. Still, better to have met them in the air then to have them up there dropping curses on us without any resistance. A lot of the Professors were apparently driven back to the school, they were targeted almost immediately. I heard they killed Professor Flitwick. But," she sniffed, trying to press past a knot of emotion in her throat, "there are still a good number of Order members about, and they're some of our best-" she was cut off at the approach of Lupin and Tonks.

"Speak of the devils," Hermione said with a smile.

"Glad to see you're all alright," Lupin said, visibly out of breath. He squinted, peering at the slumped mass in the nearby snow. "Is that…?"

"Lucius Malfoy," Harry offered. "Had his own curse reflected back on him after Hermione upset his plans to cook us all alive. Can't imagine Draco will be too pleased when he finds out."

"Well, if you're particularly unlucky you'll be able to tell him yourself," Lupin said. "I saw him skulking about the rear lines a bit earlier, fed me some mumbly tripe about wanting to redeem himself and his family name. Turned a few shades of green when I asked to whom he wanted to be redeemed," he sniffed, curling his lip slightly. "Still, he has potential; he just needs the opportunity to make his own choices for once."

"He's made plenty of his own choices," Harry spat venomously, thinking of the Astronomy Tower, watching Malfoy disarm and almost kill Dumbledore in his mind's eye. Tonks seemed to know Harry's thoughts.

"But it was Snape killed Dumbledore," she said, touching Harry's shoulder gently. "Malfoy's only had his family to guide him all these years, and, well," she gestured towards the prone form of Lucius Malfoy, "I mean, imagine if you had only had your aunt and uncle raising you from birth, no other influences." Harry pondered this for a moment, thinking of the moment of sincere gratitude shown to him by Dudley, after years of their antagonistic relationship; could something like that be lurking inside Malfoy?

"We're going back to Hogwarts to check on the school grounds. I heard someone saying something about acromantulas coming out of the Forest," Lupin said. "Are you going to be alright here?" The trio nodded. "Stay safe," he warned sternly. "Watch out for each other,"

"Go on, then, Lupin," Ron said, but he quickly followed it with a nod and a sincere, "We'll take care of each other."

The couple grasped each others' hands and turned in place, Apparating as close to Hogwarts as they could and leaving Harry, Ron, and Hermione relatively alone, the others having filtered away to pursue the retreating Death Eaters. The area of Hogsmeade in which they now stood seemed to have been more or less secured.

"I'm going to the Hog's Head," Hermione said. "Professor McGonagall said she was going to try and meet with Aberforth Dumbledore there, it'll probably be an area of some importance. I'll Apparate back as soon as I can and find you, alright?" She gave the two boys a quick hug, one arm around each of their necks, although Ron was the only one for whom she spared a kiss on the cheek. And then, with a turn and a whooshing influx of air, she too had vanished.

"Guess it's a lad's night out, now, eh?" Ron said. Harry laughed, but was cut off before he could respond.

"Potter? Weasley? Is that you two?"

Ron rolled his eyes. "Merlin's trousers, who is it now?"

Draco Malfoy skulked his way out of an alley, eyes darting around the street like an animal unsure of its own freedom.

"Listen, Potter, before you fly off the handle,"

"It's…it's alright, Malfoy," Harry said.

"Everything's gone totally mad," Malfoy said. His skin, normally pale, seemed positively bloodless, with his eyes sunken into deep bruiselike pits on his face. Harry felt a pang of pity somewhere in the frenetic emotional storm the day had wrought upon him. "I never really…I didn't think…"

"Oh come off it," Ron began, but Harry cut him short.

"Listen, Malfoy, before we go any further…Malfoy?"

But Malfoy had trailed off, one eyelid twitching slightly as he stared between Harry and Ron, his eyes transfixed on a limp robe-wrapped body several dozen meters up the street. He blinked rapidly, as though he could clear this frightful vision from his eyes like a piece of dust.

"Is…" He choked before any further words could exit his mouth.

"Malfoy," Harry said, trying to cram as many different justifications and reassurances into the one word as he could manage.

"You…_did_ this?" Malfoy said, looking between his father's corpse and Harry's battle-weary face. "You did this?" he repeated, angrily.

"Lucius tried to kill Hermione, I only cast a Shielding Charm and his spell, it…" Harry could sense that this situation was spiraling horribly out of control.

Malfoy's face twisted into a mask of hatred. "I should have killed you, Potter!" Harry Potter watched with dismay as any chance of redemption drained out of Malfoy's face, leaving it soulless as well as bloodless. "I should have killed you any of the times I had the chance, and father would have been proud! Proud and ALIVE!" He drew his wand, closing his eyes and thrashing out violently, wildly…"_Avada Kedavra!_"

Harry raised his wand, but he knew, he knew that there was no way to stop what was coming. Then, suddenly, the green light erupting from Malfoy's wand was obscured, and he felt himself being knocked backward as Ron Weasley pushed him out of the way, the curse's light permeating through his chest and appearing as a sickly green corona to Harry before he slumped on top of him. Harry saw Ron's eyes, focused intently on the snow beneath him, the empty white of the ground stretching away into his newly vacant body.

"_Expelliarmus!_" Malfoy's wand flew from his hands. He took a step away from Harry as the other scrambled to his feet, face burning hot with rage.

"Did that make you feel powerful, Malfoy, finally had the spine to go through with it?" Harry asked, holding his wand as though he planned on stabbing Malfoy in the gut with it.

"Harry…" Malfoy said, looking swiftly at his wand and then back to the other boy. Harry took this as a challenge.

"_Sectumsempra!_"

Malfoy screamed as great crimson gashes opened up on his arms and face, with more no doubt dampening his robes with spilled blood.

"Please, Harry, stop!"

"Do you feel powerful, Draco?"

"No! No, I don't!"

"_Sectumsempra!_"

"I mean YES! Yes, I feel powerful!" the boy sobbed, squealing as the gashes deepened and were joined by fresh ones. A ring of crimson snow was beginning to form around him as he writhed on his knees. Harry Potter spat out yet another spell, his hands shaking so much he almost missed even at point-blank range.

"_Sectumsempra!_"

"I'LL FEEL WHATEVER YOU WANT ME TO FEEL!" Draco cried in desperation, before a gash finally opened itself on his throat and he could no longer speak. He clutched at the hem of Harry's robes feebly, opening his mouth to gurgle some sort of plea for his life. He only managed to choke up blood onto Harry's shoes before he finally bled out and lay still.

Harry Potter looked from one body to another, letting his wand drop into the snow, and feeling completely without power.


	3. Chapter 3

**Harry Potter and the Veil of Time**

Chapter Three: The Night is Always Darkest Before the Morn

By Cybergades

* * *

><p>Elsewhere, there were the sounds of battle, of the cries of dying men and women, and of the pounding of great frozen fists against wood and stone. But in a brief and terrible moment of isolation on a body-strewn stretch of Hogsmeade street, there was only the howling of the wind, so ubiquitous and chilled into the bones that the screaming wind seemed like blessed silence to Harry Potter. Nothing moved on the street except for the scattering flakes of snow, and the dark misshapen crimson stain that inched slowly in all directions, trying to escape the body of Draco Malfoy.<p>

Harry Potter drew freezing breath after freezing breath, the wand he had stolen from Draco Malfoy's hand still trembling with the warmth of the magic that had coursed through it, carrying hatred and deadly rage into the body of Draco Malfoy. Malfoy's own wand, borrowed with words of encouragement from either a Death Eater who recognized Lucius' progeny or (Harry shuddered at the second possibility) from a Hogwarts student who did not recognize the traitor he or she was aiding. And still, Harry thought, his eyes glancing towards the wreck that was once Lucius Malfoy, if things had gone differently, could Draco have turned from this violent end?

Rising to his feet, Harry inched away from the spreading bloodstain that flowed towards him accusingly. He had acted without thinking, and realized now how lucky he was that Draco's wand had obeyed him so thoroughly. Ollivander's words echoed in his mind…"Whether it _needs_ to pass by murder, I do not know…" and Harry looked down at the wand in his hand. He had claimed it so thoroughly, it would even kill its former master for him. And then the realization set in with freezing clarity; Harry Potter had just murdered Draco Malfoy.

Harry blanched slightly, abandoning sudden and ill-formed attempts to rationalize or excuse his actions. In a moment of rage he had stooped to levels he knew would have sickened Albus Dumbledore. He had dispensed cruel justice without thinking, and had repaid one vile action with another. He looked at the face down body of Draco Malfoy and felt his stomach twist with regret. Had he not been justified? Ron had been his staunchest ally, one of his closest confidants, snuffed out in an instant in one final act of protection. But the guilt was there all the same, and Harry had to force himself to unclench his fists. There would be ample time for regret later. Now there was only time for the fate that had been doggedly pursuing him since his birth.

His feet crunched in the snow as he weaved his way through the Hogsmeade streets, gradually making his way into areas of greater conflict. The first group of students he came upon cheered loudly when his Shield Charm saved one of their number, and joined him in subduing the handful of Death Eaters they had been fighting. He paused only a moment to ensure that they were still fit to continue before moving on, their words of encouragement sounding muffled in his ears.

He was so intent on finding Voldemort that he didn't see Bellatrix until she was almost on top of him. She was standing, arms arched predatorily , watching him approach almost without belief. He noticed her when she moved at last, and he threw up a Shield Charm between them with his heart in his throat, watching her bare her teeth like an animal on the other side of the shimmering barrier, reaching out to prod the shimmering magic with the tip of her wand.

"That can't save you, Potter," she said with a grating laugh. "There's precious little that can save you from me, and even less that will save you from Him…" she breathed the last word reverently, lovingly, and Harry could detect a twinkle of sick adulation in her eyes.

"What'll it be, Harry?" she whispered. "I could bring you to the Dark Lord, alive, and we can put an end to this slaughter. Or you can resist," she added, biting her lower lip. Harry could almost feel her coiling around him like a great constrictor snake. "And then I can kill you myself. Disappointing the Dark Lord like that just might be worth it if it means I'd get to end you. Unless of course, you think you can pull off a better Cruciatus this time." She winked, chuckling, and Harry felt his anger spike. She noticed his hands clenching, which only inspired her to greater fits of laughter.

"Oh, Harry, you're easier to needle than a cat with broken legs," she said, patronizingly. "Come on, what say you? Spare your friends any more pain and just _give yourself up!_" She hissed the last words, unable to contain her anger and impatience. When Harry did not immediately respond, she raised her wand, mouth pursed with fury.

"Alright!" Harry shouted, causing her to pause. "Alright, let's just get it over with, then. No more killing."

Bellatrix smiled evilly. "Well, I don't know about _that_, but-"

Whatever maliciousness she had meant to say was cut off by sound of screaming behind them. Turning to look over his shoulder, Harry saw a crowd of students and Mrs. Weasley rushing up the street. He turned back to Bellatrix's astounded face, head tilted slightly to one side, and the two of them shared looks of confusion between the fading Shield Charm. Harry looked back when one of the students cried "Spiders! Spiders from out of the Forbidden Forest!"

Sure enough, one of Aragog's monstrous brood thundered down the street behind them, its massive legs clinging to the sides and roofs of cottages as its enormous midsection squeezed down to the street level, all eight lidless eyes glaring at the fleeing mass ahead of it.

"Truce?" Harry Potter offered meekly.

"Tch!" Bellatrix only scoffed in response, and when she aimed a curse, it was at the center of the fleeing students. In their panic to avoid the incoming magic, students bowled over one another. They were further scattered and disoriented by the explosion of magic when the curse hit the ground. Harry called out angrily, turning to disarm her, but she only laughed and batted aside his curse before deflecting another spell, cast by the furious Mrs. Weasley.

Harry managed a quick nod to Mrs. Weasley before the two of them began assaulting Bellatrix in earnest. However, the Dark witch was a frighteningly competent duelist and managed to fend off their own attacks as well as the occasional attacks of the other students, who were mostly preoccupied by the giant spider whose fangs kept snapping at them.

"I'm going to enjoy listening to the children die once this is over," Bellatrix cried, laughing at the face of hatred this elicited from Mrs. Weasley. Ron's mother brought back her wand-hand for a powerful casting, but Bellatrix capitalized on the second's hesitation, cackling out "_Avada Kedavra!_" and sending a bolt of green in between the woman's raised arms. She collapsed like a ragdoll, wand clasped loosely in her hands.

"_Expelliarmus!_" Harry shouted.

"_Expelliarmus!_" Lestrange replied mockingly, dodging his curse and returning with one of her own. She caught Malfoy's wand in her hand with a snap of her wrist, waving it mockingly at Harry.  
>"There we are, Potter, that wasn't so hard, was it? Now let's not keep the Dark Lord waiting."<p>

Before she could grasp Harry's wrist to drag him off, the two were overwhelmed by the crowd of students, who was fleeing again from the spider. One of them had successfully blinded it in most of its eyes, and it was now shaking itself violently to try and clear its vision, stampeding towards them. Harry seized his chance, leaping to the ground by the body of Mrs. Weasley and slipping her wand from between her fingers. He whirled on Bellatrix, who was cuffing a child hard on the side of the face.

"_Expelliarmus!_" he tried earnestly, saying silent thanks in his mind as Mrs. Weasley's wand obeyed and Bellatrix's wand soared into his hand.

"You RAT!" she shrieked, but was cut short from further insult by the half-blind acromantula, who seized her in a moment of blurry anger. She managed a few more high-pitched wails before there was a sickening crunch and she spoke no more. Draco's wand tumbled from her limp grasp, landing underneath the seething forest of legs that stumbled awkwardly in the street for a moment before rumbling away after the children that blinded it. Harry hurried over in its wake, fishing Malfoy's wand out of the kicked-up snow and noting with relief that it had not been stepped on or crushed. He dropped Bellatrix's wand with distaste and replaced Mrs. Weasley's wand in her hands with gentle kindness.

"Thanks," he said softly, but his voice was lost on the wind.

Harry was nearing the Shrieking Shack when he saw the dark shape above him, saw Voldemort materialize out of a swift-moving sooty-looking cloud and descend to earth, alighting on one foot and falling easily into a stride. The Dark Lord clapped his hands slowly.

"Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived," he announced with a sweep of his arm. "So glad you could make it."

"I'm here, Voldemort," Harry said. "Call off your dogs."

"Plenty of time for that when you're dead, isn't there, Harry? You don't get to come to me dictating terms for your surrender."

"I'm not surrendering," Harry said simply. "I'm giving you a chance to surrender."

The small Death Eater crowd that was beginning to form around them erupted in laughter, dominated by Voldemort's reedy cackle.

"You know, Potter, I was almost worried about facing you, before I saw to a bit of business," he jerked a nearly-skeletal thumb back towards the Shrieking Shack. "Now I don't expect there will be a problem."

"Snape…" Harry murmured to himself. "Trying to get the Elder Wand to obey you?"

"I don't suspect that will be a problem, now. I made a…slight miscalculation. I should have destroyed Dumbledore before your eyes, and taken the wand with my own hands. But in the end, it's all the same," he said with a shrug.

Harry, already cold from walking in the snow, felt an even deeper chill spread out from his spine like icy water, and he watched as most of the Death Eaters retreated uneasily. Dementors descended from the clouds, forming a loose cloud around them.

"The dementors are hungry, Harry," Voldemort said. "Can you feel their want? It's a pity for them I'm going to kill you myself, but maybe they can suckle the soul out of your corpse, if they're fast enough."

"You're deluding yourself," Harry said, shaking his head. "The Elder Wand's not going to obey you, even if you did kill Snape. He wasn't its master, and neither are you."

Voldemort looked annoyed. "What nonsense are you _playing_ at, Potter?"

"The wand need not pass from master to master by an act of murder or tomb-robbing, Voldemort. A simple disarming or other significant defeat will suffice. And before Snape killed him, Dumbledore was disarmed and defeated by someone else. Draco Malfoy."

Voldemort gave a sort of half-chuckle scoff. "Well, Harry Potter, this certainly destroys my evil plans. I guess there's nothing left for me to do now. Oh, except for _kill Draco Malfoy_."

"You can't do that," Harry said.

"Enlighten me," The Dark Lord said. "Why not?"

"Because I've killed him myself only this last hour."

"You're lying," Voldemort stated plainly. "You don't have what it takes to take a life, Potter. You never did."

Potter shrugged.

"Honestly I think I wish you were right, Voldemort. I already had his wand by the time I did it, and that probably could have been enough to have mastery of the Wand. If you don't believe me I guess you'll just have to call my bluff."

Voldemort eyed Harry suspiciously, Nagini coiled tightly around his neck arms and shoulders like a scaly scarf. He waited for a moment, as though curious what sort of last-ditch gambit might be waiting to explode out of the snow at any moment, then he announced "_Avada Kedavra_!" his curse striking Harry clearly in the center of the chest.

Harry Potter was knocked backwards to the ground by the force of the curse striking him, and he gasped for breath as sheer agony rushing across his body like molten fingers, stopping at his scar to focus a blinding agony there that he thought would be sure to split his head open. Still, he was alive. Hadn't something gone wrong then? He became vaguely conscious of Voldemort screaming alongside him. Then, with an almost-audible suddenness, the pain in his scar stopped and he came crashing back to reality, taking great seizing breaths as he lay there on the snow. The dementors were closing around him curiously, so close now that he could feel the sepulchral warmth of their breath.

"_Expecto_…" he muttered weakly. He felt the icy grip of their long fingers scraping against him, and focused his mind on the fact that he was still alive. Voldemort's plans had failed so far. He was so close, just a few more moments of effort…

"_Expecto Patronum!_" He bellowed, a great white stag erupting from the tip of his wand and scattering the dementors like ninepins. He clambered to his feet, his Patronus circling him protectively and casting a blinding glare that glinted harshly on the falling flakes of snow. Swiftly he located Voldemort climbing to his feet, Nagini's head darting back and forth from its master to the glowing stag.

"_Sectumsempra!"_ Harry said, seeing he had regained his composure before the Dark Lord. He twitched his wand, carving out the air. The great snake's head separated from its body messily, leaving a ragged edge that had clearly taken multiple cuts to sever fully. Voldemort let out another terrible shriek, falling back to his knees as his final Horcrux lay draped dead across his shoulders.

"It's over, Tom," Harry said. "You're nothing but a man, now."

Voldemort could muster no response, looking from side to side at the limp coils of his beloved pet.

"It's never too late for remorse, Voldemort," Harry said, almost sadly. "But you've got to mean it."

"I'll kill you, Harry Potter," Voldemort hissed softly, his last shreds of hatred clinging to him, for fear that he would be completely empty without them. "There is nothing that can keep me from you."

"Don't try it," Harry warned. "Just let it go."

"_Avada Kedavra_!" The Dark Lord uttered with finality.

"_Expelliarmus!_" Harry returned, and the twin spells met in between the two wizards, crackling and spitting sparks angrily across the snowy ground. But the Elder Wand recognized its master, and the contest was short-lived. With a slow inevitability, Harry's spell overpowered Voldemort's, and the two bursts of magic soared through the air together and collided with Voldemort's body. The Elder Wand was flung from the Dark wizard's hand even as the life fled from his fingertips, driven out of his body by his own Killing Curse. Harry walked to where the Elder Wand had fallen on the snow, picking it up and turning it over in his hands. So many wizards had fought and died for a wand of such power…Harry shook his head. He would return the wand to Dumbledore's tomb, where it would hopefully lie for the rest of time. But first…he dug into the small bag Hagrid had given him so long ago, producing the broken halves of his own wand.

"_Reparo!_" he said hopefully, and forced a small smile when the two pieces of his wand fused flawlessly back together. Maybe everything was going to be alright.

Harry carried the headless body of Nagini with him, showing it threateningly to any Death Eaters he saw and exhibiting it as a grim trophy before any Dumbledore's Army members or Hogwarts students he came across. Word swept across the battle-torn village like wildfire that Voldemort had been stricken dead, and that Harry Potter was victorious. The morale of the Death Eaters crumbled swiftly, so that by the time Harry reached the Hog's Head it was relatively peaceful, with some Death Eaters disarmed and under guard, while their opponents tended to the wounded, both D.A. member and Death Eater alike.

"Harry!"

The snake was knocked from his grasp as Hermione threw her arms around his neck.

"We couldn't believe it when we heard, thank goodness you're alright!"

Harry simply nodded, drained and out of breath.

"Where's…where's Ron?"

Harry felt her words hit him like a punch in the stomach. He looked at her helplessly , unwilling to speak aloud what he knew she had already realized.

"Hermione…"

She remained silent, her lower lip trembling. Harry knew from experience that the pain of loss was something that was suffered in solitude, no matter what sympathy others could offer. He drew her close again, an embrace not of triumph but of bitter mourning and helpless sympathy. After a few moments, Hermione pulled away, wiping at her eyes and affecting a determined and businesslike mood.

"Everything seems to be drawing to a close, there's just a few pockets of Death Eaters at Hogwarts who refuse to accept what it means that their Dark Marks have faded. Honestly, it's amazing what some people will convince themselves of in order to avoid-"

"Wait, Hermione, what did you say?"

"What?"

"Hogwarts? There are Death Eaters in Hogwarts?"

"They broke through when they drove the spiders out of the Forbidden Forest. Oh, Harry, you don't think…"

But Harry was already gone, dashing towards the castle with a new found energy, his stomach twisted up and churning as though he was burning up his own insides for fuel. He heard Hermione shout into the wind behind him.

"Harry, wait!"

He ignored her, pressing through the crowd of people towards Hogwarts as fast as he could manage. It took him several minutes to sprint up the steep pathways that took him most directly to the castle, and he only sped up his pace when he saw the doors of the Great Hall blown off their hinges. Students stopped to greet him, but he ignored them, the guilt of ignoring his friends overpowered by his need, the burning question inside him…_where was she?_

The wounded looked up at him hopefully, but he pressed past them, dragging the guilt burned into him by their eyes along with him, bearing the weight desperately and willingly as he searched the standing students, those sitting down in splints and casts, and those lay strewn out along the Hall, each one lying as though asleep for only a moment.

Harry felt the blood flow out of his face as he spotted her. He was vaguely conscious of saying something, or perhaps only making some tortured sound before he fell to his knees. He felt the crowd press away from him, giving him a small pocket of solitude in which to view the corpse of his love. Ginny Weasley was still beautiful, even in death, and Harry touched her pale cold face with fingers that trembled of their own accord. The tears filled his eyes, and in his watery vision he could almost see her move again

Harry found himself moving through the school as though in a dream. Occasionally someone would speak to him, and he would watch himself respond without thinking. Eventually he found himself bundled up in the Gryffindor common room, watching the sputtering embers of a fire die in the great fireplace, the Gryffindor house colors on the walls looking muted and dull in the chill night air. He felt bitterly ashamed, for killing Malfoy, for everyone that had died that day, for leaving Hermione alone with her own grief.

"Now now, lad. There's nothing to be gained from self-pity," an aged male voice seemed to echo in his mind.

"Oh, Dumbledore," Harry said. "I feel I've handled all this so dreadfully."

"Nonsense, lad. Have you not saved the Wizarding world from the threat of Voldemort?"

Harry was half-aware that this was a rather bizarre conversation he was having.

"I guess, but…Ron, and Ginny, and Malfoy…"

"I know you feel for them, lad. Even the Malfoy child, although that is something of a rarity for one of your kind."

"One of my…Dumbledore, what are you talking about?" Harry asked, before asking the even more obvious, "…and how are you alive?" Harry was barely conscious of the physical world around him, except that it no longer seemed as though he was in the Gryffindor common room, instead existing in some sort of warm dim expanse. He saw a figure approaching him through the shadows. As it came near, he saw that it was not Dumbledore at all, but an even taller man, in a robe and pointed hat, who stooped to address him.

"You're not…" he said dreamily.

"Relax, young master Potter," the man said. "You are among friends."

"Is this real?" Harry asked.

"Indeed it is," the man replied.

"Where am I?" he squinted into the darkness around them.

"That…is a difficult question," the old man admitted, stroking his long white beard.

"Who are you?"

The old man perked up at this. "Oh, that is a much simpler question." He removed his hat, offering Harry a low bow and a kindly smile.

"I am Merlin."


	4. Chapter 4

**Harry Potter and the Veil of Time**

Chapter Four: Merlin... Really?

By Cybergades

* * *

><p>Harry stood dumbfounded, feet planted firmly on the ground of this strange place within places.<p>

"You're who?" he asked, sure that he had simply misheard the man, who he was only half-sure wasn't a hallucination or dream.

"Merlin," he stated plainly.

"Merlin, like _the_ Merlin?" Harry pressed. "Are my dreams really that unoriginal?"

"This is not a dream, strange though it may seem," Merlin replied. His speech was like that of Dumbledore's, although he lacked a certain personable nature and kindness that had always persisted in Dumbledore's voice. "And yes, I am the same Merlin of Arthurian legend."

"But how is this possible? Haven't you been dead for hundreds of years? And what spell is this, how are we even talking?" Harry's mind buzzed with questions and impossibilities, but Merlin raised a wrinkled hand and he fell silent.

"Allow me to make us more comfortable," Merlin said, waving his hand purposefully.

The empty space around them slowly coalesced into the Gryffindor Common Room, although it seemed somehow very different, like it had been painted by watercolor. Objects and colors only seemed to have a sharp definition when Harry looked directly at them, and other than that they remained watery and somewhat unfocused. Merlin seated himself in a large high back chair, shifting his robes somewhat.

"We are, in a way, utilizing magic, although it is magic that is beyond even someone of your fairly prestigious skills, Harry. I will explain more later, but suffice it to say that the magic witches and wizards have access to is a somewhat diluted form of the power I tap into. For example, I have constructed this environment out of the subtlety and complexity of your own memories. It seemed like a place of great comfort to you, and so I brought us as near to that place as we can both exist at this juncture."

"So are you like a ghost?" Harry asked. "I'm just trying to make sense of all this."

"Yes, I imagine that is rather difficult," Merlin mused. "No, I am not dead, although I am no longer alive in the sense that you are probably considering."

"Did…did Dumbledore go wherever…however it is you are?"

Merlin shook his head slowly. Harry's face fell.

"Fear not, Harry. Simply because Dumbledore is not here does not mean that he is not at peace, or that he would not be immensely proud of your accomplishments."

Harry shrugged noncommittally. "I'm glad someone's at peace."

Merlin nodded somewhat sadly at this.

"Yes, if there is something you and your friends deserve, Harry, it is peace. But unfortunately, we are not always offered the luxury of everything that we deserve. For men of honor there is always a time of sacrifice, where those of true valor must protect those without." He gestured to one of the spectral chairs. "Please, please, sit."

Harry sat in the chair, somewhat surprised at how real it felt as he sank into the cushion. "So what are you saying? That this isn't over? I saw Voldemort die by his own hand."

"Yes, indeed. I have been watching you with great interest, Harry, even though you have not been able to make contact with me until now."

"Why's that?"

Merlin paused for a moment, a look of serene contemplation crossing his face.

"I believe," he said, gesturing abstractly with one finger, "that it was your state of extremely intense conflicting emotions that brought on the mental state whereby I was able to connect with you. Your joy at defeating Voldemort, coupled with your anger at him, at the Malfoys, even at yourself, for stooping to their level of violence for even a moment, and of course your grief," he paused as he saw Harry biting his lip. "In your mind's overwhelmed state, you reached a level of consciousness where at last I was able to interact with you, and it is happy fortune that we were able to meet! For I have much to tell you of, much to warn you about, and precious little time!"

"Much to warn me about?" Harry asked. "What do you mean?"

Merlin opened his mouth, but remained silent for a moment, as if searching for the right words.

"…There are threats to this world approaching, from very far away and very long ago, and allies willing to help you defend against them. I can offer you some aid, some guidance, and whatever wisdom I can manage, but there are others like myself who would frown upon my intervention, even to this meager extent. For my part, I am sorry that I am unable to assist you more directly, but any flagrant intervention could end up only making things worse for you in the end."

"I don't understand," Harry said.

"No, I feared as much," Merlin said with a shake of his head. "Harry, your ancestors…there is a power in your bloodline, a power that you are beginning to manifest beyond your peers. You share a connection to your ancient ancestors that few can claim in this day and age, and it is an absolutely vital tool in what is to come. For it has been too long already, and we will be forced to compromise. You are familiar with the Department of Mysteries, correct? At the Ministry of Magic?"

Harry nodded. "Yes, but…what are you talking about?"

Merlin rose and approached him. He took his hand, and Harry flinched for a moment before realizing that Merlin's hand felt the same as any other human hand that might have taken his. There was a sincerity and clarity in the ancient eyes that seemed somehow familiar to Harry.

"Harry Potter," Merlin said. "You are willing, are you not, to do anything to protect the ones that you love?"

"Yes," Harry said without hesitation.

"You are somewhat unique in that regard," Merlin said with a small smile. "Although you have several friends who could give you a run for your money with regards to selflessness and sacrificial love."

Harry immediately thought of Ron and grew silent, retracting his hand from Merlin's grasp.

"Very well, Harry. I understand that this all must seem a bit surreal and difficult for your mind to parse properly. So let me come to the heart of it. What would you give for a chance to do it over again, with what you know now? To confront the Dark Lord again, but with all the years of knowledge and effort you've already accumulated at your disposal?"

"You mean like using a time-turner?"

Merlin shook his head. "No, not simply sending your future self back into the past, with all of the potential for causal disruption that implies. No, the process I am talking about would revert the entirety of existence to an earlier point in time, but your mind, and only your mind, would be left intact. Once there you will be able to make contact with me, that is to say, my past self, and we can set to work in earnest, for there is much work to be done, and," he paused, laughing softly, "precious little time in which to do it."

Harry stood up, noting that Merlin seemed to tower over him.

"Why would you do this? And how? I'm supposed to just believe all of this, get whisked away on some grand sacrificial journey not a day after the greatest struggle of my life?"

"I'm afraid so," Merlin said. "You must understand, there is so very little time to explain."

"Make time," Harry said flatly.

"That is what I am trying to do!" Merlin said somewhat impatiently. "Harry, I promise that, in the past, I will explain everything to you, in much greater detail, when we have the luxury of much more time to prepare. Now, you are familiar with the Department of Mysteries?"

"Of course, don't you know that I am?" Harry snapped.

"Yes…yes, of course, the Hall of Prophecy…you remember then, the Death Chamber, where tragedy befell your godfather?"

"Yes. I remember." Harry said.

"The Veil, Harry, the Veil is the key! To nearly anyone on Earth except for you, to pass through the gate is certain death. But your level of…advancement, of evolution, make it such that you can use the Veil, you can pass through it fully and emerge unharmed."

"Does this have something to do with the Peverells?" Harry asked warily. "The Deathly Hallows?"

"No no, dear lad, nothing of the sort. The Deathly Hallows were purely wizarding innovations, impressive though they might have been. The idea of their origin from an anthropomorphized death is merely a flight of fancy on the part of your culture, to try and explain how the Peverell brothers could operate with magics that were beyond their understanding or capacity."

"So I'm supposed to just…" Harry tried to handle the idea in his mind, his brow furrowing. "I'm supposed to just trust the strange old man speaking to me in my mind, sneak into the Ministry of Magic, and walk through the archway that killed my godfather, in the hopes that it will send me _back in time_ to combat some unspecified evil which is greater than Voldemort himself. Does that about sum it up?"

Merlin sighed. "It seems, Harry, that you are doomed to follow the cryptic instructions of meddlesome old men. I wish I had more time to explain everything to you, and I promised you I would. Or rather, I will have. Please, Harry, you have to trust me." And Harry saw in his eyes that same strange familiar sincerity, something he couldn't quite place.

"Am I supposed to just walk into the Ministry?"

"I don't see why not," Merlin said. "You do, after all, possess the Invisibility Cloak. And I suspect people will be a bit more receptive of your presence than the last time you visited."

"Have you been spying on me this entire time?" Harry asked incredulously.

"Longer than you know," Merlin said. "You are destined for great things, Harry Potter."

"Lovely," Harry said. "Just when I thought I would never have to hear someone tell me that again."

"Get to the Veil," Merlin said, and Harry noticed that his form was starting to become smudgy, watery, like the edges of his vision in this strange room. "Once there, you'll know what to do. I'll see to it. Good luck, Harry,"

"Yeah…thanks," Harry said uneasily as the figure of Merlin dissolved into a flurry of colored lights and disappeared. The strange and dreamlike Gryffindor common room faded around him as well, the watery and over-saturated colors fading into their normal, more somber texture, still lit by the stubborn embers in the otherwise-dead fireplace.

The Great Hall was still littered with the injured and the dead the following morning, although Madame Pomfrey had enlisted the help of some other students to begin wrapping the dead in sheets. Harry noted with satisfaction that they were wrapping them by hand, which seemed proper to him, for some reason. When Harry saw Hermione, slumped onto one of the benches and leaning forward on her elbows, he edged towards her, a lump of guilt in his throat. Merlin said that going back in time would reset everything, didn't he? Does that mean that no one would remember any of this? And that Ron and Ginny…

"Hi, Harry," Hermione said quietly, when Harry had wandered close enough.

"Oh, er…um…hi," Harry said, sitting down across from her.

"I'm sorry about Ginny," Hermione said weakly.

"And I'm sorry about Ron," he replied. The two of them were silent for a moment, both aware that their apologies could never encapsulate what they were really trying to say to one another.

"If it wasn't for him, I never would have even made it to Voldemort," Harry said. "We all owe him everything." Hermione nodded slowly, chewing her lower lip as though she was trying to decide if this was any consolation or not.

"What's going on in Hogsmeade?"

"They're still trying to get everything cleared away," Hermione said. "There was a lot of damage to the village during the battle, most of the inhabitants had fled. It'll probably never be the same again, but at least most of it is still standing, more or less."

"What about Hagrid?"

"They moved him back up to the school grounds this morning. Professor McGonagall said they were going to bury him out near his hut. Oh, Harry, you should have seen Fang, he's been inconsolable all day, he won't leave Hagrid's side."

Harry smiled softly at this, thinking of Hagrid's overly affectionate and loyal watchdog.

"Listen, Hermione, there's something I have to do, and…and I'd like you to help me."

The words were out of Harry's mouth before he could really think about them, and he immediately wondered if it had been a good idea to mention anything. Hermione looked quizzical.

"Sure, Harry, what's up?"

Slowly and carefully, Harry explained what the spectral Merlin had explained to him, from the shadowy evils to be defeated to the seemingly ludicrous idea of going through the archway in the Death Chamber. Hermione listened without much response, making Harry unsure of how she was taking the idea. When he had finished, she sat there staring at him for a long time, until at last he cleared his throat and she began to speak.

"Harry, this is…I know how you're feeling, with Ginny and Ron and…" she stopped, brow slowly furrowing. "No, no, Harry, this isn't fair, I _don't_ know how you're feeling. We've both suffered a loss, and now you want me to help you kill yourself? And you're feeding me some story about Merlin, of all people?"

"No, Hermione, it's not-"

"I thought you knew me better than that, Harry Potter." She stood up swiftly, pacing away from him so that he could not see her face. Harry let her go, wringing his hands as he sat at the long table. What if she was right? What if he was trying to get himself out of this miserable situation, by just…letting go?

But Harry knew that wasn't the case. While he was willing to die, for his friends or his family or humanity at large, if it came to it, he wasn't the sort of person who would throw their own life away, especially after fighting so hard to achieve the successes that had been hard-won in the last few days. So that left only the implausible truth, that the ancient wizard Merlin was coaxing him through a potentially deadly time portal in order to buy precious days with which to combat some unseen burgeoning menace. With a sigh, Harry felt for the Invisibility Cloak in his robes on his way out the Great Hall door.

When he was a safe enough distance away from Hogwarts, Harry threw the Invisibility Cloak over himself and Apparated to the Ministry of Magic. His first attempts to gain entry failed; apparently the visitor's entrance in the phone booth was still inaccessible. He had heard on his way out of the castle that Kingsley Shacklebolt had been appointed interim Minister of Magic, but he didn't know exactly what degree of control the Ministry itself was running under…there could still be pockets of Death Eaters and their sympathizers within, although most of the Imperius Curses should have been broken by now. Finally, after nearly two hours spent lounging around the lavatory entrance to the Ministry, he managed to pick the pocket of a Disapparating wizard and gain entrance by flushing himself down to the Atrium. The main statue, of the pureblood wizard rulers seated on a throne of Muggles, had been half-deconstructed, with tiny Muggle statues strewn across the Ministry floor, where a crowd of maintenance wizards were carefully collecting and marking every piece.

Avoiding contact with anyone, Harry slipped into one of the more deserted stairwells, keeping his breath even and silent as he descended several flights, to the Ninth Level, the Department of Mysteries. He nearly held his breath as he made his way through the black-tiled winding corridors, past locked doors and shadow-shrouded chambers. He knew what he was looking for. Even after two years he could still find his way there easily; the Death Chamber.

It was deserted when he entered; no doubt study on the objects in the Department of Mysteries was suspended due to the chaos across the wizarding world in the wake of Voldemort's defeat. In the center of the chamber stood the arch, brittle and ancient-looking, the great black curtain strewn over the yawning mouth of the archway, fluttering slightly in the eerie non-existent breeze. Harry stepped out from beneath the Invisibility Cloak, walking towards the arch, his mind aflutter with emotion and remembrance. The room was filled with the whispers of those beyond the veil. One, however, came to the forefront.

"I had faith in you, Harry. I knew you would recognize the truth of my words." It was Merlin. Harry saw the dreamlike saturated colors return to a corner of the room, coalescing together to form the well-kept, long-bearded and sumptuously-robed old wizard.

"I'll ask again," Harry said, swallowing hard. "I've got to just…walk through this, and everything will be all right?"

"See for yourself," Merlin said, directing Harry's hand towards the rim of the arch. Reaching forward tentatively, Harry brushed a hand along the ancient stone of the archway. The entire ovoid shape crackled suddenly, causing Harry to retract his hand as though he had touched a hot stove. From the point where his fingers had brushed the stone, a series of runic symbols traced in light began to appear. They stretched across the circumference of the arch, connected by a spider-web of faintly-glowing leylines, until the entire archway was brimming with a ghostly pale light. The black veil was blown aside as though by a great wind, and Harry looked through the archway and saw an endless expanse of undulating forms and shapes.

"Later on we built gateways that were more stable," Merlin explained. "They stayed away from the close connection this gate has with the land of the dead, but in exchange they lost the power to travel through time, only through space."

"Like a Portkey?" Harry asked.

"Yes, very much like a Portkey," Merlin said. "Now, Harry, I need you to concentrate. Feel the images welling up from deep in your mind. Close your eyes if it helps."

Harry tried to concentrate with his eyes open, but the shifting shapes within the archway were too distracting, and he finally closed his eyes. At first there was only the warm blackness of his own eyelids and the frenetic scurrying of thoughts and worries through his brain. But gradually these surface thoughts quieted, and he was left with strange sensory thoughts, images of strange glowing symbols that burned in his mind as strongly as any childhood trauma.

"What are these symbols in my head?" Harry asked, clutching the sides of his face. "What did you do to me?"

"I only gave you the necessary knowledge," Merlin said gravely. "There are many who would say I have already done far too much, and yet I hope to do more, much more, in the past.. Now, hold the symbols in your mind and touch the arch."

Harry reached forward again and touched the glowing archway. A set of 9 symbols along the archway's edge began glowing fiercely, far outshining their peers.

"Yes, yes, very good," the shimmering Merlin image said. "I must leave you now, Harry, before I am discovered. Step through the gate, and we can begin our great work. Remember how you contacted me before, in this time. You will need to reach those heights of emotion again. I've planted the seeds in your mind, along with the knowledge that you need." With that, he faded away, like a watercolor left in the rain.

"Can't be worse than Apparating," Harry said to no one in particular, looking into the archway again. The shifting forms of the dead had disappeared, and instead of an empty black expanse there was a thread of blue winding its way into the infinite darkness like a tiny river. Harry took a deep breath, terrified that it would be his last, and stepped across the threshold of the arch, into history.


	5. Chapter 5

**Harry Potter and the Veil of Time**

Chapter Five: Back to the Past!

By Cybergades

* * *

><p>Harry looked around himself cautiously; before him, the shining blue thread stretched away forever into the darkness, while behind him it receded to the horizon. He tried to remember how long he had been plodding along the trail of the thread of light, but found that he couldn't recall. He held up one hand in front of his face, but found that it did nothing to eclipse the faint light of the thread. In a vague, sluggish panic he tried waving his hand back and forth, but it was as if his hands weren't there at all. Raising both hands, he failed to find even his own face in the darkness.<p>

"Bloody weird," he murmured soundlessly.

The expanse around him was unchanging and interminable. Harry wasn't even sure if he was currently moving at all, or if he was simply floating in the cold darkness. Purposefully, he tried marching forward, placing one unseen foot in front of the other, and although he couldn't see it, he at least felt as though he was making progress.

"I wish Merlin had bothered to tell me what it would feel like when it was working," Harry said to himself, still unnerved by the total silence that swallowed his words before they could reach his spectral ears. "All this fumbling around in the dark is rub-"

His last words were cut off as he felt himself being jerked forward, his stomach twisting inside him as he was yanked through the void as though he had grasped a Portkey. When he dared to open his eyes, he found that the darkness around him was pulsating, breathing as if alive, and the featureless expanse was becoming less and less so. Small pinpoints of light were beginning to appear at various points on the horizon or in the middle distance, and the shadowy forms of the dead, once absent, had returned, flitting across these points of light like moths circling a flame, or gathering near the threadlike trail to watch Harry pass by. Harry was torn between the horrified urge to hide his face, and a burning desire to try and recognize the faces of the spirits as he passed. He managed to avert his gaze, however, wary of attracting too much attention to himself.

Harry felt the breath knocked out of his lungs as he took a sudden jerking turn. The thread that once stretched straight in both directions was now winding like a snake, undulating through the darkness while more and more pinpoints of light winked into view around it like a field of stars. For the first time, Harry was glad for the apparent loss of his physical body, because it meant that he would be unable to vomit as he was pulled roughly this way and that. It seemed as though he was accelerating, like the force that was dragging him along had caught the scent of its destination and was now rushing towards it with reckless abandon. Harry saw one particular point of light growing closer and brighter, like the front lamp of a train speeding towards him in the darkness. He immediately regretted this mental comparison as he felt fear crawling across every inch of him, the light rising up to meet him, blinding and crushing and total.

Harry was so bowled over by the sound of human voices that he nearly screamed. He hadn't realized until then that his travel had taken place, not only without any sounds from him, but without any noise at all. Now he was surrounded by light and sound and figures rushing to and fro. Looking down at himself, he saw that he was still immaterial, or at least invisible.

"What the blazes is it doing?" He heard someone say. "Are they coming out of it?"

"Impossible," another voice replied, cold and stern.

Blinking his eyes, Harry realized he was in the same room from which he had departed, and the Veil stood behind him, a great stone mouth that had spit him back into reality. A handful of wizards were gathered around it, staring in fearful anticipation. Turning, Harry saw that the thin fabric of the Veil was billowing violently, and the forms of the dead were clustered near the entrance, some even stretching half-formed and shadowing limbs into the Death Chamber, scraping spectral nails on the stone floor. The glowing symbols that had activated the archway were glowing brightly, although they were slowly fading away. From various directions spells struck the gate and did nothing as the wizards (Unspeakables, Harry realized) tried to get the archway to shut itself down.

"Stop!" the same commanding voice echoed in the chamber. Harry turned to look at the wizard who spoke, and saw a tall man in robes of shimmering black, with piercing hawk-like eyes peering at the room from beneath a furrowed brow.

"Artemius, what if-?" a shorter wizard standing nearby began, but the man, Artemius, reeled on him.

"You are creating a magical interference without producing any observable benefit, and every spell that is cast will make this moment more difficult to study later. Focus on reading the trails coming out of the arch, find out what sort of magic could have caused a ripple this large, and where it might have come from." The shorter wizard stammered for several moments, stumbling over various attempts to agree with his superior, to excuse himself, to ask forgiveness, until Artemius finally snarled, "Go!" and the wizard scurried away.

Artemius stepped towards the gate, and towards Harry, who held his breath, still standing on the threshold of the archway. He squinted at the glowing symbols on the edges of the stone, his frown deepening, looking as though he had the answer to a difficult question on the tip of his tongue. He finally sighed and turned away, the sigils on the archway now glowing no brighter than the embers of a campfire. Harry felt a pressure gathering in his gut, and knew enough to take a gasp of air before the symbols winked out completely, and he felt himself dragged away from the chamber, pulled right through the walls like a ghost. He had time to wonder if he really was a ghost, if the travel through the arch had somehow destroyed him, before the acceleration caused him to black out.

"_Harry Potter!_" Harry heard the voice say, and heard the crowd gasp around him.

Opening his eyes, he saw that he was in the Great Hall at Hogwarts, now packed with students, who were whispering to one another and pointing at him. He recognized among them the thick fur-lined cloaks of Durmstrang's students, and the sheer airy robes of Beauxbatons. He looked uneasily towards the source of his name, and found Dumbledore standing at the teacher's table, the Goblet of Fire before him, holding a piece of paper with Harry's name on it and gazing at him with slightly raised eyebrows. As he watched, Professor McGonagall leaned down to whisper fiercely into his ear, to which he nodded slightly. Looking down at himself, Harry saw that he was in his own real physical body once again, although it was blatantly several years younger than it had been earlier today when he stepped through the gateway in the Death Chamber. It was true then; he had been sent back in time, his mind transferred into his younger body. Merlin had been right.

"It worked," he whispered to himself, before realizing that this was possibly the absolute worst thing he could say at this moment.

"It _worked?_" Ron asked in a hissing whisper. "What did you…how did you-?"

"Harry Potter," Dumbledore repeated. "Up here, if you please."

"Go on," Hermione said from behind him, pushing him forward slightly.

Harry plodded towards the front of the Great Hall, not eager to relive the tumultuous rumor mill that he knew was going to turn this into a circus for him. With a shudder, he realized that he was going to, at some point, be forced to speak with Rita Skeeter again.

"Through the door, Harry," Dumbledore said humorlessly. Harry gave him an apologetic glance, looking from stern face to stern face along the teacher's table, before he walked out of the Great Hall and into the room where the champions waited, the room that would be an interrogation chamber in a matter of moments. But already his wheels were turning, and he was beginning to formulate a plan. He could get himself out of this! He could save himself the year of stress, his friends doubting him, the wizarding world looking at him like a cheat and a liar.

"I can explain!" he said as he burst through the door. Fleur Delacour was so startled that she nearly toppled into the fire that was roaring in the fireplace, but Viktor Krum held her back, glancing venomously at Harry.

"Vat is the meaning of this?" he said coldly.

"The goblet spit my name out," Harry said. "I'm the fourth champion."

"Zat ees very funny," Fleur said, although no one laughed. "Do zey need us back in ze Great Hall?"

"No, I'm serio-" Harry started to say, but was bumped to one side by Ludo Bagman entering the room.

"Extraordinary!" he said. "Absolutely extraordinary! Gentlemen and- oh. Oh, you didn't tell them already did you?" He said, turning to Harry and looking slightly crestfallen. "I was looking forward to breaking the news myself, I was. Although I suppose you've a right to be excited," he added with a nudge and a wink.

"This is outrageous!" Krum said angrily. "Preposterous! A blatant-"

"Enough, Viktor," Harry heard Professor Karkaroff say, and knew that the headmasters and Hogwarts teachers were entering the room behind him. He felt dizzy, reliving these old moments again, suddenly back in his younger body. He looked down at his own hands, trying to refamiliarize himself with his fourteen year old body. He heard the headmasters arguing with each other, although it seemed less like he was there among them and more like he was watching it, as though he had taken a dip in the Pensieve and was reliving his own memories. He half-expected to look around and see another version of himself, the real version that existed in these memories, looking frightened and confused nearby. He actually chuckled slightly when Madame Maxine referred to him as a "little boy," eliciting sputters of rage from both Maxine and Karkaroff.

"He thinks zis is humour!"Maxine cried accusatorially, pointing an enormous finger at him. Harry quickly threw up his hands.

"No, it's not that, I…I'm just really nervous," he said. It was mostly true, anyway. He lapsed back into what he hoped was a respectful silence while the teachers continued to bicker with one another, a silence which became most difficult to maintain when it was Snape's turn to spin this entire scenario into an elaborate attempt by Harry Potter to break every rule on the books at Hogwarts. As they spoke, his mind began to wander, to try and understand what he could do with this new time he had been given. Visions of Sirius, Ron, Ginny, Hagrid, Dean…all those who had died for him, because of him, flashed before his eyes, and he resolved that he would do everything in his power to see that things resolved differently this time around. Not to mention that he'd have to deal with whatever threats Merlin had been talking about. But that would have to wait, he realized; there was a threat right here in Hogwarts, right now, feasting in the Great Hall, sipping insidiously from a hip flask, and any minute now, stomping through the door to offer helpful sounding and useless advice. Harry steamed with anger as he thought about how he was going to call Barty Crouch out, in front of everyone…that would certainly draw their attention away from him for a moment.

"Harry," he heard Dumbledore say. It sounded like it wasn't the first time he had been addressed. His eyes snapped back into focus, looking to the aged headmaster.

"I asked you if you put your name into the Goblet of Fire?" Dumbledore repeated patiently.

"No, of course not," Harry said, at which Madame Maxine scoffed. Karkaroff scowled, while Dumbledore only nodded.

"And did you convince one of the older students to enter your name on your behalf?"

"_No_," Harry said, trying to sound outraged.

"But of course 'e is lying!" Madame Maxine piped in, and the headmasters lapsed back into bickering while Harry looked around, trying to gauge the attitudes of everyone in the room. Fleur and Krum looked about as angry as he remembered, so instead he tried to get a read on Cedric Diggory, who seemed like he was sizing Harry up. He didn't look angry, and any surprise had faded from his face, and as they looked at each other Harry was overcome with the images of the graveyard, of Cedric's unmoving body slumped heavily against the headstones, and of his weeping parents. Harry resolved that, above all else, _that_ would not be a repeat occurrence this year.

"Empty threat, Karkaroff," called Moody from the door, while Karkaroff postured about withdrawing his school from the tournament; Harry had been waiting for this. "your champion can't leave now, he's got to compete; they've all got to compete. Binding magical contract, like Dumbledore said. Convenient, eh?"

"_Extremely_," Harry said bitterly, looking at Moody. The magical eye rolled wildly in its socket, while his normal eye squinted slightly. He opened his mouth, but shut it again. Obviously he didn't expect Harry to have put together why someone might have entered him in the championship. Harry could barely suppress a smile. How much more would that eye be twitching if Crouch knew the extent of Harry's knowledge, about him, the Triwizard Cup, and the horrible decayed mess that was nursing on snake venom even now, tended by the coward Wormtail.

"Convenient?" Karkaroff echoed with a scoff. "I'm afraid I don't understand you, Potter."

Harry jumped at the chance to take the lead on this exchange. "Well, it's simple, really. Somebody must have put my name into the goblet, knowing I'd have to compete if it came out."

"Well, yes, Harry, that is the whole idea," Cedric piped up from the rear of the crowd. In spite of himself, Harry couldn't help but laugh. Perhaps this could be a second chance for him; he and Cedric could have been close friends after the tournament, if not for the disastrous way it was set to end.

"I mean," Harry said, continuing to steal the words right out of Moody's mouth, which was currently opening and closing soundlessly, "someone could have put a Confundus on the Goblet, made it think there were four schools competing instead of only three, and then entered my name as the only entrant from the fourth school, so it would have to pick me as the fourth champion." While the others muttered this over, Harry glanced sideways to see Moody's eye positively spiraling in Crouch Jr's eye socket. "At least," he added coyly, "that's what springs to mind."

"And 'ow convenient," Madame Maxine said with a slight sniff. "But 'ow do we know you did not do zis yourself?"

Professor McGonagall drew in a sharp breath and opened her mouth to protest, but Dumbledore raised a hand to cut her off.

"Minerva, there's no need to be upset, these people are simply addressing what are of course very valid concerns. However, I would like to speculate that if Harry was capable not only of fooling the Age Line, but also casting a Confundus Charm powerful enough to trick the Goblet, perhaps we should simply give him the trophy now, for he must be a very powerful wizard indeed."

No one had an immediate response to this, and so Dumbledore turned to Crouch.

"Now, Barty, I believe the rules are fairly explicit on this point, regardless of what curiosities might surround the process?"

Mr. Crouch thought for a moment before giving a slight shrug. Harry noted that he looked ill, with papery skin and sunken eyes. He realized that he must already be under the effects of the Imperius Charm.

"Er…yes," he said absently. "His name came out of the Goblet, so he's obliged to compete…"

"That settles it!" Bagman said hastily, and Harry wondered how much goblin gold was weighing down on his thoughts at the moment. "Well then, Mr. Crouch, if you'd like to explain the first task?"

"Wait!" Harry said suddenly, and all eyes turned to him.

He looked at Mad-Eye Moody, trying to formulate words, to decide how he was going to out the imposter standing in front of everyone, but then a thought came to him. He knew how this year was going to play out, assuming that Crouch was allowed to continue his masquerade as Mad-Eye Moody. He knew what to expect from the challenges, and more importantly, he knew exactly where Voldemort was going to be, at the end of the year, waiting in the cemetery on the other side of the Triwizard Cup Portkey. But if he were to tip his hand now, and expose Crouch, then Voldemort would be tipped off, and there would be no way to predict what would happen after that. Harry remembered that Voldemort had said that Wormtail was convinced any wizard who opposed him would do for the ritual that returned his body to him, and he only chose Harry so that he could bypass the magic that prevented them from touching, and for a bit of stylistic flair. So foiling this plot wouldn't necessarily stop Voldemort from returning to his former powers. But if Harry played along…if he let Crouch continue to believe that he was secure in his disguise as the Defense Against the Dark Arts instructor, and if he completed the Triwizard tasks—which shouldn't be too great a challenge, given that he knew what they were now, in fairly explicit detail—then he could touch that Portkey prepared, ready to dispatch whatever lay on the other side, and end this nightmare years early. He was nodding to himself in self-satisfaction when Dumbledore cleared his throat politely, and he realized that everyone was still staring at him.

"Er, what I wanted to say is," he stammered, grasping for something that would be worth holding everyone up like this. "I don't know exactly how my name got in the Goblet, but I just wanted to wish everyone good luck, really. It's an honor to be able to compete with you."

There was a pause, during which Harry could practically see the snide remarks banging around inside their various heads, before Cedric finally blurted out, "Well, I had a bit of luck beating you last time, Potter, so I wouldn't mind some more."

Their laughter was enough to dissolve the tension in the room, and the champions made their way out towards the Great Hall, Cedric clapping Harry on the back as he passed.

"If your Confundus Charm is really that good," he whispered as he passed, "I really am going to need that luck."

"But I didn't-" Harry hissed, but Diggory was already gone. Harry sighed; I guess I'm going to have to deal with this all over again after all.

"Dumbledore!" Harry called after the headmaster, who had one foot out the door. He turned back, peering over his half-moon spectacles.

"Yes, Harry? You'd best not keep your housemates waiting, I'm sure they have all manner of contraband items they've been saving up for just such a celebratory excuse to break out."

"You believe me, don't you sir?" Harry asked. "You believe I didn't put my name in the Goblet?"

"I do, Harry, I do," Dumbledore said kindly. "Unlike the wizarding world at large, I have come to know you as one who does not seek glory unnecessarily, especially when it might cause others pain." Harry opened his mouth to say something, but Dumbledore smiled and shook his head. "Get along to the Gryffindor Common Room now, Harry, your friends are waiting."

"It's…it's really great to see you again, Headmaster," Harry said with some difficulty. He brought his hands to his face as though he was rubbing sleepiness from his eyes.

"Difficult summer?" Dumbledore queried.

"Something like that," Harry replied. He wasn't going to tell Dumbledore the truth, at least not yet.

But he knew exactly who he _was_ going to tell.


	6. Chapter 6

**Harry Potter and the Veil of Time**

Chapter Six: I'm from the Future... No, Really?

By Cybergades

* * *

><p>It took forever for the Gryffindor Common Room to calm down, much less empty out. Harry was assaulted with firecrackers, noisemakers, cheers and handshakes the second the Fat Lady swung aside to reveal the entrance. He looked around for Ron and Hermione, although he knew they wouldn't be there. With a small sigh, he resigned himself to an evening of trying futilely to explain that he had not cheated to put his name in the goblet while being waved off, stuffed full of sweets and butterbeer, and hoisted on various shoulders.<p>

When he finally extricated himself from the crowds and bolted up the stairs, he found Ron exactly where he was the last time, with exactly the same strange forced grin on his face. Harry actually paused in the doorway, unsure of how to proceed.

"Oh hello," Ron said. Harry had to stop himself from rolling his eyes. He reminded himself that he had almost four years on Ron now, although his body didn't show it, and it was his responsibility as a friend to avoid the awkward jealous rage that had split them for so long in their fourth year.

"So, congratulations," Ron said. Harry could feel the sarcasm dripping off his voice; had it been this obvious before?

"Ron, listen," he began.

"How did you get across the Age Line?" Ron asked point-blank. Harry could hear the unasked question underneath it—_why didn't you take me with you?_ He struggled with various lies and versions of the truth. What would keep Ron from his disbelieving anger?

"If I promise to tell you tomorrow," he said at last, "will you promise to stop giving me that fake grin?" He continued before Ron could protest. "I know, Ron. I understand that you're upset. Just please let me explain tomorrow, at breakfast. We'll bring some toast back to the Common Room or something and I'll…lay it all out for you. It's a bit of a mouthful."

"It must be, if you managed to fool Dumbledore and all the others," Ron said warily, but Harry was glad to note that his smile seemed more genuine now.

"Tip of the iceberg, mate," he said with a laugh.

The following morning, Harry and Ron sent Hermione down to fetch breakfast from the Great Hall, Harry pleading desperately to avoid going down there and facing all the questions and unwanted attention again. Hermione agreed, to Harry's relief; in addition to feeling awkward around the fellow classmates because they so firmly believed he had cheated his way into the Triwizard tournament, it was also difficult to chat amiably with people who he had seen lain out in the very same Great Hall only a few days before, in the calm sleep of death. However, the Creevey brothers, joined by other Gryffindor students pouring in from breakfast, made it impossible to have a private conversation, and so they were forced to vacate the Common Room. They finally settled in the library, because, as Harry explained to Hermione's disappointment, it was where fellow students were least likely to converge and distract them. As Harry had anticipated, his first version of his explanation was met with stark disbelief. It didn't help that he really had two or three different stories to tell, and he had no idea where to start with any of them. At last, he decided to explain about Merlin and the gateway in the Department of Mysteries first, because it explained how he knew so much about what was going to happen this year. However, it proved difficult to even begin to explain.

"You came through what? From _where_?" Hermione struck like a snake with her questions, barely letting Harry finish his first absurd-sounding sentence about gateways to the past.

"Well it's not that ridiculous, is it?" he asked, fully aware that it was almost completely ridiculous.

"Harry, I know the Department of Mysteries works on some secret stuff," Hermione began, somewhat condescendingly, "but that doesn't mean you can just make up any story you want and throw in an Unspeakable as a plot element and expect it to be plausible."

"I don't think you should be talking about time travel being absurd, though, Hermione," Ron said.

"_Thank you_, Ron!" Harry said, glad that at least Ron wasn't ignoring or avoiding him.

"Story's still rubbish, mate," Ron added with a grin.

"That was a Time-Turner," Hermione said. "Everyone knows those things actually exist. And it could only send me back an hour at a turn, I don't even think they can send someone back _years_."

"Well, that's not really relevant, is it, because I didn't use a Time-Turner," Harry said, somewhat impatiently. "Just, let me get the whole story out, and then you can pick it apart."

Hermione raised her hands and eyebrows in mock surrender. "Fine, fine, sorry, go on."

And so Harry worked his way through the tale, starting with Voldemort's defeat and Merlin's appearance. He mentioned Ginny's death, at which Ron's face grew stony, but didn't have the heart to mention Ron's own demise. Hermione actually scoffed out loud when he mentioned Merlin, but didn't interrupt him. Finally, he explained everything that was going to happen this year- the three tasks he would have to perform, the disastrous results of Hagrid's attempts to breed Blast-Ended Skrewts, Rita Skeeter's unending smear campaign against him, and finally Mad-Eye Moody's secret, and the trap that would be waiting for him at the end of the third task: Voldemort, reborn and as powerful as ever. When he finished, he spread his hands before them, to indicate that he had no more fantastic-sounding tales to spin, and waited for their crushing wave of disbelief. Ron and Hermione were silent for several moments, looking from Harry to one another as though hoping to catch some glimmer of a laugh, something to reveal that this was all an elaborate put-on. When none was forthcoming, Ron finally piped up.

"So, you're saying you _didn't_ put your name into the Goblet of Fire," he said slowly.

"Come off it, Ron, I've only been saying that since the second Dumbledore pulled my name out of the bloody thing."

"No you didn't!" Ron protested. "You said 'it worked,' didn't you?"

"That's true, Harry," Hermione chirped, "I did hear you say that."

"Only because that's when I got put into this- into my body," Harry said. "I'm not going to lie to you, I wasn't exactly sure it was going to work. I mean, let's be honest, this is a pretty weird story."

Ron scoffed. "Bloody right it is. And you expect us to just soak it up, just like that, on your say-so?"

Harry pressed his hands together, scrunching his eyes shut as though in particularly frustrated prayer.

"Ron, _why_ on Earth would I make all this rubbish up?"

Hermione shrugged beside him, but Ron strained to think of a reason. After a few seconds Harry reached forward and gripped his friend's shoulder.

"Ron Weasley, I swear to you that I am not lying. If anything I just told you isn't true, then someone has thoroughly lied to _me_, and I'm the only one who's been made a fool of, not you." He paused, and then added, for good measure, "I need you on my side, both of you."

"Merlin told you to prepare for some great threat?" Hermione asked, cautiously, testing out the truth of the words for herself. "You mean other than You-Know-Who?"

"Yeah," Harry said, "I mean, at least, I think so. But Voldemort's still out there! Right now, being taken care of by Wormtail! The ritual he's found, it will restore his physical body to him, he'll be just as strong as he ever was, and he doesn't need me to do it! He could use anyone! That's why we can't let on that we know anything, we have to let everything play out the way it did. That's the place where we know for sure that he'll be, at the end of this year."

"And we can stop him then?" Ron asked.

"Right. We'll probably have to inform Dumbledore eventually, the last time it happened there were a lot of Death Eaters showing up, I don't fancy slogging through them all with just the three of us."

"And Sirius!" Hermione said brightly. Harry felt a strange mixture of sadness and elation; he hadn't mentioned Sirius' death to either of them, and the full realization that his godfather was still alive filled him with startling and conflicting emotions. The emotion swelled in him like a great wave, until he felt drunk with it, and actually swayed where he stood, forced to lean against a table to steady himself. He remembered what Merlin had told him, about needing to put himself into a highly emotional state in order to make contact with him again, and felt momentarily disappointed. That wasn't enough? What would he need to experience in order to get the answers he sought?

"You alright, Harry?" Hermione said, and Harry waved her off.

"Fine, I'm fine," he said. "I'm just worried about Sirius, is all."

The two of them looked at him disbelievingly.

"Wait," Ron said. "If you're Harry from the future, how can you be worried about Sirius? Don't you already know for sure how he's doing right now?" His eyes grew wider and he lowered his voice to a whisper. "Is something about to happen to him? Has something _already happened?_"

Harry shook his head, then stopped.

"In a way, I suppose it's already happened," he said, before telling them the story of the Hall of Prophecy and the Veil. They listened intently, and Harry saw Hermione hide her face when he described how Sirius had fallen into the Veil and been lost forever.

"You great git, Harry," she said. "If you'd only told us that part we would have believed you straight off, we know you'd never make anything like that up." She sniffed loudly, then forced herself to smile. "But that's good, isn't it? If that doesn't happen until next year, then that means that Sirius must be fine right now!"

"Yeah, he's alright," Harry said, waving her off. "It's just weird, you know."

"Yes, 'weird' is definitely a word that I would use to describe this," Ron said, waving his hand in a circular motion to encompass "this."

"Oh, shoot!" Hermione said suddenly. "I'm late! You boys'd better hurry too! We'll talk later!" She shouted over her shoulder as she scampered out of the room. Ron leaned back in his chair, resting his feet on the table and resting his hands behind his head. He and Harry exchanged glances, and for a moment Harry could almost forget about the future.

"Oh. Shoot," Ron said in a deadpan, a wide grin on his face.

"We're late," Harry added with a knowing smile.

It wasn't until Double Potions that afternoon that Harry realized that maintaining the school year as he remembered it was going to be difficult. The red flags first went up when he entered the dungeon classroom to find the Slytherin students sporting their "SUPPORT CEDRIC DIGGORY" badges. He scoffed, waving them off as they pressed them to change the message to "POTTER STINKS." It would be easy to ignore them, he knew, but for some reason he couldn't quite remember it seemed like it wouldn't be that simple.

"Oh _very_ funny," he heard Hermione saying behind him, "really _witty,_" and then it hit him. This was the day that Hermione fixed her teeth! He was about to get into a fight with Malfoy, and then…

"Want one, Granger?" Malfoy's voice cut through the air. "I've got loads. But don't touch my hand, now. I've just washed it, you see; don't want a Mudblood sliming it up." For a split second Harry wished that Malfoy was still dead. That hatred made it easy to do what he knew he had to, and he leapt to his feet, glad that the anger on his face was real, for Hermione's benefit.

"Go on, then, Potter," Malfoy said quietly, and Harry stared at him intensely, wand at the ready. Malfoy's lips kept moving, spouting off some quaint nonsense of a taunt, but Harry had no ears for that. He was focused intensely, trying to pick out the exact moment, the perfect instance in time when their curses would—and there! The nearly-imperceptible twitch of Malfoy's wrist!

"_Furnunculous!" _Harry screamed, just as Malfoy's "_Densaugeo!_" echoed against the damp dungeon walls. The curses crackled and spat out of their wands, clashing into each other and ricocheting away, towards…

"Hermione!"

Harry breathed a strange sigh of relief as he heard Ron's shout of alarm. He saw Hermione's startled face, her front teeth growing out of control, and he tried his best to look the part of the concerned friend, trying not to let on that this had really all been for her benefit. He also took a good long moment to savor the look on Goyle's hideous face, now made even more hideous by the inclusion of several welts boils and pustules, now already swollen to bursting and still growing. He noted with a small chuckle that his skill at cursing had improved somewhat since the last time he had subjected Malfoy's lackey to this particular jinx. He had properly composed himself by the time Snape entered the dungeon, and pulled off the outraged argument with Malfoy without a hitch. He was a second late to start yelling at Snape with Ron, but luckily he managed to begin screaming before any of the obscenities Ron was shouting became intelligible. For the rest of the period he reflected that getting detention, even when you have foreknowledge that you are going to do so, for the benefit of your friends, is still a less than ideal experience.

The worst part of being sent back in time, Harry had decided, was that he already knew all of the material being taught in his classes, and so he was unable to focus properly on the material. That meant, of course, that the only thing left to pay attention to was the chattering, whispering, murmuring and pointing of his classmates. There was so much rumor mongering happening around him at all times that Harry was certain he had changed the timeline already, and that he had somehow made himself even more the center of attention than he had been the last time around. Harry was actually glad to be able to leave class when Colin Creevey came for him, even if it meant going to the photo shoot with the other champions…even if it meant seeing…

"Rita Skeeter!" Bagman was boasting, gesturing towards the curvy witch in the hideous robes. "She's doing a small piece on the tournament for the Daily Prophet…"

"Maybe not _that_ small, Ludo," Rita said, and Harry felt a wet shiver slither down his spine as her eyes passed over him. He could feel it in his gut; there was no way he was going to be able to stand it. Taking a detention for Hermione's sake was one thing, especially if he got to curse Goyle in the process. But this…

"I wonder if I could have a little word with Harry before we start?" he could hear her asking.

"Certainly," Ludo Bagman replied, "that is, if Harry has no objection?"

"Of course not," Harry said with an enormous fake grin plastered to his face.

"Lovely," Skeeter said, wrapping an arm around Harry's shoulder and whisking him into a nearby broom closet.

"Ah, yes, nice and cozy," she began, while Harry picked up his feet to avoid stepping in a spilled puddle of All-Purpose Magical Mess Remover. "Now, Harry, you don't mind if I use a Quick-Quotes Quill do you? It leave me free to talk to you normally."

Harry didn't even bother replying, simply watching as Rita reached into her heinous looking crocodile skin bag, producing the vibrant green lie-fountain that was the Quick-Quotes Quill. Harry maintained a small smile on his face as she sucked on the tip for a moment before placing it upright on the parchment she laid out before them. He could feel the excitement building inside him as the quill began to scroll across the parchment. He was looking forward to changing this particular aspect of his history.

"Attractive blond Rita Skeeter, forty-three, whose savage quill has punctured many inflated reputations…"

"Lovely," Rita Skeeter said. "So, Harry…what made you enter the Triwizard Tournament?"

Harry sat silently for a moment, as though trying to think of the perfect answer. All the while the quill skritch-skritch-skritched along the parchment, doling out purple prose about everything but what was actually occurring in the broom closet.

"Ignore the quill, Harry," Rita said, an edge of annoyance in her voice.

"Just a minute," Harry said, almost sweetly, and he reached forward, grasped the quill firmly, noting how it wriggled like a fish in his hands, and very neatly snapped it in half with a satisfying crack that was echoed in a small peep from Rita Skeeter, who was momentarily speechless. He breathed in a breath of fresh broom closet air, gesturing with his hands as though to indicate the new found flow of fresh energy.

"There, now, isn't that so much better?" he said, placing the quill back down on the paper, where it began shakily scratching out narration once again.

"After months of loyal service to the queen of investigative journalism, the faithful quill had meet its end, un-dune by the very champion of Hogwarts himself, the cruel-voiced and scar-browed tyrant Harry Po-"

At this the quill seemed to have finally worn itself out, and after stumbling a blotchy black line of ink around the parchment, finally keeled over, twitching melodramatically before it finally lay still.

"How dare-"

"Don't speak, please," Harry said, all traces of civility gone from his voice "And for God's sake, don't _write_."

"Oh, I think that I shall be doing a very good bit of writing!" Skeeter said with a harsh laugh. "I'm sure my readers will be very eager to read about this new unseen side of their hero Mister Potter!"

"And yet, somehow, I think that they'll be disappointed," Harry said coldly.

"Is that a threat?" Rita said with one raised perfectly-sculpted eyebrow. "You just keep making this story juicier, Harry, really now."

"You want to hear a juicy story?" Harry asked. "I think it would make for a pretty good tale if people were to learn that there was an unregistered Animagus using her talents to spy on people so that she could advance her career as a hack journalist. I think this person knows that she's just a vile scandal maker, and that she only has the attentions of the crowd as long as she's able to keep herself from becoming the next scandal. And I think if _someone_ leaked this little story, she'd find her own readers tearing her reputation apart before she knew it."

While he spoke, the color drained from Rita Skeeter's face, her lips fading into a thin line as her eyes darted around the interior of the broom closet, as though she had realized that she was trapped in here, trapped with the boy who knew her awful secret. She forced herself to laugh.

"That's a fascinating story, born of a fanciful imagination, Harry," she said with a false grin. "But you haven't any proof. There's no reason for anyone to believe you."

"I think you know better than anyone how little that matters, you pretentious hack," Harry spat out, and watched the new found grin on her face fade into a grimace. At the vehemence of his insult the Quick-Quotes Quill lying on the parchment gave a single jolt, like lightning passing through a corpse, before lying still once more. "Write your scandalous little lies about me, or my friends, and I'll see to it that your career as a journalist is over. And if you don't think I have the resources to do it, have a chat with a mountain of Galleons in my bank vault." He reached behind him to grasp the doorknob, watching Rita clamber to compose herself.

"Now then," he said sweetly, a sparkle in his eye, "let's take some pictures, eh?"


	7. Chapter 7

**Harry Potter and the Veil of Time**

Chapter Seven: The First Divergence

By Cybergades

* * *

><p>"What are you looking so pleased about?" Hermione said, interrupting Harry's reverie.<p>

"Nothing," Harry said. "Just patting myself on the back."

"Well cut it out," she said playfully. "We can barely concentrate on our schoolwork with all your daydreaming."

"Shhhh!" hissed Madame Pince from her desk. The sound echoed through the towering shelves of the library where the trio of students had settled down to work their way through that night's homework, or in Harry's case, to try and properly crystallize the look on Rita Skeeter's face in his memory forever.

"Say, Hermione," Ron said, looking at her sideways. "I don't mean anything by it, but er…your front teeth…"

Harry smiled as he saw Hermione blush ever so slightly.

"Well…after Harry and Draco got into that scrap in Potions and I was hit with a sidelong curse, they sent me to the hospital wing to get fixed up. Madame Pomfrey cast a spell to shrink my teeth, and told me to look in the mirror and tell her when they were back the way they were before, and I…I took the opportunity."

"There's a spell that shrinks teeth? What next?" Ron asked quizzically. Hermione only rolled her eyes.

"Well, I hope you appreciate it," Harry said, trying to maintain a stern tone of voice. "That's a detention with Snape of all people that Ron and I will be suffering through."

"I'm really sorry about that, guys," Hermione said, then narrowed her eyes slightly. "Wait, Harry…if you already know everything that's going to happen this year…"

Harry laughed and waved her off.

"Think nothing of it," he said. "Either of you would do the same for me, if…if we somehow ever found ourselves in that situation again."

"So have you thought about when you're going to tell Dumbledore?" Ron said.

"Not yet," Harry said, shaking his head, "although it should probably be soon. Dumbledore has access to allies and materials that we can't even come close to. Even if I managed to clean out my vault at Gringotts, Dumbledore's had decades to build connections we just have no access to."

"What about Sirius?" Hermione said. "I know he's lying low right now, but he'd probably have some advice on how to proceed."

"Oh my gosh, Sirius! I knew I was forgetting something!" Harry said. "The last time I was here, I wrote to him right after my name came out of the Goblet of Fire. I've got to go, guys, I'll catch up with you later." Rising, he stalked swiftly towards the library door.

"Wait, Harry, your homework!" Hermione called out.

"I already know everything I learned this year!" Harry shouted over his shoulder.

"That doesn't mean you can just flunk everything!" She cried back, a tinge of desperation in her voice, but he was already gone. "Hopeless!" she said, half to Ron and half to herself.

"_Shhhh!_" hissed an exasperated Madame Pince.

Back in the Gryffindor Common Room, Harry stretched the empty parchment out before him, quill in hand. He knew he wanted to get Sirius close to Hogwarts, as he did last year, as he would be a valuable ally and a trusted friend to have close by. Those were the reasons he gave himself, the rational and easily explainable reasons. But below all that rationalization and excuse-making, he knew the truth—Sirius was alive, and Harry was ecstatic at the prospect of seeing or talking to him again. His hand shaking, he touched it gently to the parchment and began to write

_Sirius,_

_ You told me to keep you posted on what was happening at Hogwarts; sorry I haven't written you sooner, only things around here are a little crazy right now. Hogwarts is hosting the Triwizard Cup this year, for the first time in centuries I think, and the Goblet of Fire spit out my name as a fourth champion, even though I'm underage and couldn't possibly have put my own name in. Somebody's trying to set a trap up for me to fall into, and I'd really like your advice on the subject. Is there any way you could contact me by fireplace on the 22__nd__ of November? I could see to it that the common room was cleared out by 1:00 AM. I trust you and Buckbeak are doing well, wherever you are._

Harry's hand froze at the bottom of the page. He gazed at the blank space for several seconds, until he finally had to jerk his trembling hand to one side to avoid dripping a great black spot where his signature would go. Nodding to himself, he pressed quill to paper and wrote:

_Love,_

_Harry_

Setting the quill down, he folded the letter and tucked it inside his robes, to be delivered to the Owlery the next time he was about the campus. No sooner had his hands retreated from his robes then they quickly darted back, feeling around the spot where the letter was hidden to make sure that it was really there, that he was really about to talk to Sirius again. He felt flush with excitement; this was the first real step towards undoing everything that had been done over the past years, correcting every misfortune and every mistake. Harry felt a surge of pure hopeful elation that was quite the opposite of the crushing depth of despair he had felt in this very room, a few weeks ago and a few years ahead. Suddenly remembering Merlin's words to him before he departed, he clung to that feeling, trying to think of ways to pile more emotion into himself. Cedric was alive, Sirius was alive, Dumbledore was alive, all thanks to Merlin's knowledge of the portal in the Department of Mysteries. And that's when it struck him…

_If the portal was a way to send himself back into the past, was there a way to send himself back far enough? Could he save his parents?_

He sucked in a quick breath, the very thought that such a thing could be possible causing his heart to skip a beat. In that instance, he felt as though he was lifting off the floor, out of his chair, upwards and…outwards? Outwards towards…

"_Merlin…_" he thought hard to himself, before murmuring it out loud. "Merlin, where are you?"

"Hmmm?" came the hazy reply. Harry wasn't even sure he had heard a human voice; surely it was simply the rustling of the wind down the vast chimney of the common room, some ancient cornerstone of the castle settling slightly. But before he knew it, he could feel the edges of his vision blurring, the colors of the room half-fading, half-bleeding together, and the figure forming in front of him, wisped together from thin air in a watery and graceful manner quite unlike the sudden –_pop -_ of Disapparation.

"What's all this, then?" queried the blurry-edged Merlin, narrowing his eyes and peering down his nose at Harry Potter.

"Mister Merlin, sir," Harry said, feeling very much like a first year again under the stern and seemingly impatient gaze of the most famous wizard who ever lived. "I…er, that is…my name is Harry Potter, and you told me…well, I suppose you _will_ tell me, but that's not really-"

"Harry Potter, you say?" Merlin asked with a raised eyebrow. "Well this is intriguing. I didn't expect I would be able to meet you for quite some time."

"About three more years, give or take," Harry said with a grin. Merlin's eyes lit up.

"Then…you were able to pass through the gate? You are from a reality more developed than our own?"

"Um, I guess that's one way of putting it."

Merlin's face became stern again. "Well, then, Harry Potter, it is good to meet you. We have much work to do, and-"

"Not enough time, right," Harry said.

"Never enough time," Merlin said, shaking his head sadly. Harry laughed.

"It's good to meet you, sir. _Again_," he added. Merlin laughed, a single sniff through his nose.

"What did I tell you already? Three years from now, that's not much time at all; I must have been in quite the rush."

"Well, yeah, you were in a pretty big hurry about the whole thing. You told me I would need this time to prepare, to prepare for an evil greater than Voldemort, from…" he furrowed his brow, trying to remember exactly what the aged wizard had told him, an age away. "From very far away and very long ago. Are they going to be using the gate at the Ministry as well? Traveling forward, like from the past?"

"No, no," Merlin said with a wave of his hand, "They will be using gates, but not that gate, and not all of them. Some will- oh, it's very hard to explain." He scratched his long white beard thoughtfully. "Why don't I simply show you? Meet me tonight, in the Astronomy Tower of your school, and I will explain everything in more thorough detail. In the meantime, I believe you have a Triwizard Tournament you need to be preparing for."

Harry shrugged. "I pulled it off pretty well last time."

"Well, that's good news," Merlin said with a watery smile. "I'm rooting for you, Mr. Potter. Much depends on your success."

"Yeah, haven't you heard?" Asked Harry sarcastically, as the room around him began to shimmer again. "I'm destined for great things."

"Hear about Rita Skeeter?" Ron said around a mouthful of kidney pie that evening at dinner.

"Got herself caught in a spider-web trying to chase down a story?" Harry asked, and then looked offended when no one laughed. "Come on, guys, I explained this. Unregistered Animagus? Beetle? Nothing?" He tossed a chicken wing onto his plate. "I feel critically under appreciated."

"Come off it," Ron said, slapping Harry on the back of the head. "You drove her off, mate. Apparently she's withdrawn from covering the Triwizard Tournament, gave some little blurb about letting "fresh new talent" have the story. Instead she's writing some human interest column, she's gone to the Americas to study ancient wizards in the Yucatan or something like that. I mean, really brilliant, you drove her halfway around the world."

"Wish I could have driven her the other half," Harry said, then promptly wilted under Hermione's icy stare. "Er…which is a joke, of course, because I realize that this would put her right back where she was before."

"You need to start paying attention in class, Harry. Keep that brain of yours exercised. All that future knowledge is going to be no good if you turn into a drooling idiot by the end of the year."

Ron made the mistake of laughing too loudly at this, and earned himself a glare from his friend as well.

"That goes double for you, Ron. You don't even have Harry's excuse, this is the first time you've been a fourth year."

Ron promptly stopped laughing, dropping his eyes to the table and cramming his mouth full of food, muttering a muffled "Yes, ma'am," around a slice of buttered potato.

"The first task is coming up, Harry, and you still haven't told us what it is," Hermione said. "We could help you, you know."

"Not with this one," Harry said. "I don't even know if I want to tell you. Maybe it should be a surprise."

"Can't be that surprising," Ron said. "We already know you're going to pull it off, don't we?"

"Well, you never know, Ron," Hermione said, in a tone of voice that informed the two boys that they were about to be educated against their wills. "Harry hasn't followed everything he did last time to the exact letter, the recent departure of Rita Skeeter being the prime example. Anything he's done differently could end up having unforeseen consequences, things he couldn't possibly predict."

"So what, I got Rita Skeeter to run off with her antennae between her legs. It shakes her world up, certainly, but it doesn't really change anything here, she didn't do anything other than slander me in the papers. Not being made a media circus will probably make it easier to take on a dragon."

Hermione opened her mouth to continue her lecture, but let it continue to drop open as her eyes widened.

"A…_a dragon?_" she whispered, "Are you serious? Harry, that's dangerous, I thought the Triwizard Tournament wasn't supposed to be deadly anymore."

"Relax, Hermione, it's not like I have to kill it or anything, just keep it from killing me while I fetch something it's guarding. I'm sure the judges have some sort of safeguards in place…although, come to think of it, I don't really remember seeing any last time…" This seemed to calm Hermione not at all, and Harry could see her mind reeling through all the possible ways he could deal with a dragon.

"Relax, Hermione. I'm going to use a Summoning Charm to fetch my broom, fly a few circles around it to get it riled, and wait for an opening to swoop in."

"That's your plan?" Ron said. "Doesn't exactly seem airtight, does it?"

"Worked like a charm when I tried it," Harry said, lying through his teeth as he recalled the shallow gash the Hungarian Horntail had managed to give him.

"What works like a charm for getting the smell of pickled rat's brains out of your robes?" Ron asked. The two of them were set to serve detention with Snape that evening, a prospect that Harry was much more eager about this time around, since at least he was on speaking terms with Ron again. He realized, in retrospect, that this year had been the year that really taught him the importance, not only of having friends to rely on when things got really difficult, but also to simply have friends around that you could talk to and confide in. He grinned at Ron.

"There's nothing for it, mate," he said. "We'll just have to live with smelling like a dungeon for a few days. Or buy new robes."

The Mexican sun beat down harshly on the stone blocks of the ruins, as it had for thousands of years. Rita Skeeter lifted her hand to shield herself from the bright light, watching cross-eyed as a single drop of sweat dangled from the tip of her nose before plunging to the stones to quickly evaporate.

"Why? Why _Mexico_, Rita?" She asked herself aloud, sliding her glasses back up onto the bridge of her sweat-slicked nose.

"You said you'd take the first assignment they gave, ma'am," came the timid voice of her new assistant, Bernerwald Chasiter. A wraith like shadow of a man, he was always skittering around underfoot, walking awkwardly behind Skeeter from place to place, slowing himself to keep pace with her on his long gangly legs. Still, she mused, he was quick with a quill, and went unnoticed enough that he could be useful for gathering information. Not that he would be seducing secrets out of any potential interviewees anytime soon, she added with a curl of her lip, watching him slick his hair to one side carefully, managing to make it look more like a toupee than it already did, which was impressive, given that it was in fact his real hair.

"That I did, Bernie, that I did," she said with a sigh, hefting her crocodile skin bag and dumping it unceremoniously into Chasiter's hands, where he very nearly dropped it.

"If I may be so impertinent, ma'am," Bernerwald said, one strap of the crocodile bag looped around his crooked pointy nose, "why _did_ you take this assignment exactly? Not often one gets a chance to cover something like the Triwizard Tournament, especially not with Harry Potter involved."

Rita plastered a false smile across her face. "I told you before, Bernie," she said with a premeditated chuckle, "I needed to get out of Britain. See how the other half lives, you know? Tell _their_ story, the stories people aren't hearing. Lending my voice and name to these stories might draw some attention to the sections of the wizarding world we don't talk about very often, educate the populace a little more, you understand."

"Of course, ma'am," Bernie replied, wriggling his head ferociously to detach the strap of the bag from around his nose. He did not look convinced.

The pair had been dispatched by the _Daily Prophet_ in an effort to "globalize" their readership, something that had been discussed with a great deal of head-nodding and harrumphing, as though it were the most obvious thing in the world that readerships should be globalized, immediately if possible, whenever the opportunity arose. Rita had been dispatched to write a full report of the activities of witches and wizards in this area of the world, especially those that predated the arrival of pilgrims and other white colonists from Europe. Rita Skeeter was here to study the magical activities of a relatively unknown sect of witches and wizards, something at which a real rough-and-tumble journalist would salivate at the thought of, and which a glorified gossip columnist like Rita Skeeter had ever-increasing difficulty. Bernerwald himself had covered the random comings and goings of the wizarding worlds celebrity elite prior to his reassignment, and so it seemed the _Prophet_ could not have picked a worse pair to cover the piece.

Still, the work wasn't without its interesting perks. As part of her assignment, Rita had been assigned an Obliviator liaison to assist in the potential interviewing of Muggles regarding their folklore and mythology of magic in the area. Although the Obliviator himself was a judgmental and unpleasant man who avoided her whenever possible, the fact that Rita could pick the brains of whomever she wanted and then simply have the record of her conversation erased gave her a feeling of power that she found addicting. Many of the interviews turned up very little, but over time she had uncovered a general trend linking the pre-Mayan priesthood with various accounts of ancient and powerful magic, often couched in "godlike" or "divine" terminologies, but indistinguishably magic to the trained observer.

That research had led them here, where, it was rumored, a great priestess had sealed a goddess inside a temple using a powerful sealing spell. At the very least, Rita had justified to herself on the way here, the pictures of the ruins might give the _Prophet_ readers something interesting to look at. Perhaps she could pose with some sort of tropical bird, to add an even greater touch of local culture to the piece…

"Senorita," one of the laborers said, approaching her. "We've broken into the tomb, come, come quickly!"

"Finally, some good news," she said with a sigh, snapping her fingers and waving to Bernerwald. "Come along, Bernie, and bring the camera."

Bernerwald looked down at the bag in his hands and then towards the bulky magical camera nearby, heaving a sigh and shifting the bag to one hand before tottering after the impeccably and unseasonably warmly dressed witch.

The interior of the temple was much cooler, and no less damp, than the outdoors, and Rita felt as though she was breathing in spider webs wherever she walked on the dusty stone floors. The temple entryway was fairly unimpressive, at least to someone looking for evidence of witchcraft; hieroglyphs and religious symbols lined the walls, some worn or chipped away, although they became more and more pristine the deeper into the shadowy stone halls the witch and wizard stepped. Finally they came to the previously-sealed stone door, which now stood ajar, the thick carpeting of masonry and dust evidence of the effort put into opening this vault to the outside world.

"Inside, inside, senorita," the man said. "It is amazing!"

"Oh, I'm sure it is," Rita said with a saccharine grin. _A pity for you,_ she thought, _that we'll have to wipe your memory if there really __is__ anything interesting in here_.

Stepping through the doorway into the interior chamber, Rita looked around expectantly, but found nothing particularly shocking. There were more hieroglyphics on the walls, animals and eyes and dogs, and in the center of the chamber was a long golden box, inscribed with more of the symbols. Rita heaved a sigh of disappointment; she had been hoping for some sort of repository of ancient magical knowledge, perhaps an account of the spells and rituals of the pre-Mayan wizards, the ways in which they hid themselves in Muggle society, or ruled over it. Instead there was only more Muggle scribbling and a coffin.

"Maybe inside the box…" she said halfheartedly.

"Senorita, is this not amazing?" the man said. "Outside, all Mayan, pre-Mayan, Inca, like the others in the area, but inside…" he held the word in his mouth for a moment to make it easier for him to believe when he said it. "…_Egyptian._"

"Fascinating," Rita said drily, trying to think of why that was important. Mayan, Incan…all the dusty old Muggle cultures she had tried to teach herself about, mostly on boring Mexican nights accompanied by copious amounts of charming Muggle liquor (the only aspect of culture in which Rita gave them any respect).

"Wait, Egyptian?" she said out loud. "As in, Egypt? Across the ocean?"

"Si, Senorita, it is amazing," the man said, wiping the sweat from his brow. "I never think to find something like this here. I think maybe we find a burial chamber, some mummies, but this," he laughed. "This will make us all very rich, Senorita." At the r-word Rita's ears twitched like a bug's antennae.

"You hear that, Bernie?" she said. "I told you we were right to come here all along.

"Of course you did, ma'am," Bernie replied tiredly. Like Rita, he was having trouble understanding the gravity of their discovery in a Muggle context.

"Now, what do you say we crack this coffin open and get a glimpse of its insides?" Rita said, excited for the first time since she had left Hogwarts. She traced a hand along the side of the box, trying to gauge how heavy it was. "Bernie, be a dear and get a picture of me with the, uh…" she strained her mind, trying to remember the proper term for the box.

"Sarcophagus," the laborer piped up cheerfully.

"Yes, thank you dear," Skeeter said with a dismissive hand-wave. At that moment, however, her hand traced across a large red gem on the top of the box, and it gave a shudder, as thousands of years of dust was shaken from it. Skeeter gave a great shriek just as the camera flash went off with a great plume of purple smoke, capturing her cowering in startled terror before the sarcophagus, which was just beginning to crack open.

Within the golden box lay a human woman, perfectly preserved as though in slumber. A few more of the laborers, attracted by the commotion, poked their heads into the chamber as the sarcophagus lid slowly slid open, split down the middle and opening outwards like a pair of wings. The collected audience gave a great gasp when the woman's eyes, closed in repose for at least two thousand years, snapped open.

"The witches here must have discovered the secret to immortality," Rita hissed in Bernie's ear. "Perhaps a variant recipe for a Sorcerer's Stone." Bernie could only nod, his eyes fixed on the strange woman's.

She was strikingly beautiful, golden jewelry draped across her body as she sat up in the sarcophagus and looked into the faces of the people who had awakened her. A sort of half-smile played across her lips as she rose fully to her feet, clothed in silk and gold and gemstones of the finest quality. On her hand there was a golden glove-like device with a circular gemstone set in the center. She flexed her fingers experimentally, then addressed the speechless audience.

"Where is Ra?" she said in a haughty, royal tone, her voice sounding with the presence of multiple speakers.

"There's no one here by that name," Rita said, smiling helpfully. "Is he a friend of yours, perhaps?"

"We have no use for friends," the regal woman replied, turning to Rita and looking her up and down.

"Yes, well, um," Rita stammered, trying to figure out how to turn this situation into an exclusive interview, "friends, right? Who needs 'em? Ha!" She tossed her hand dismissively, to prove to her newly awakened exclusive story that she was in fact as friendless and free-spirited as she claimed.

"Yes, friends are without value," the woman continued, raising her hand. The jewel in the center of her glove began emitting a stream of light onto Rita's face, and she sank slowly to her knees, a look of surprise and confusion on her face.

"Servants, however, are always welcome," the woman said with a cruel, many-voiced laugh, and her eyes shone with a terrible radiance.


	8. Chapter 8

**Harry Potter and the Veil of Time**

Chapter Eight: The Truth Revealed

By Cybergades

* * *

><p>No matter how many times he found himself alone in the Hogwarts hallways at night, Harry always found that nighttime roaming brought out the little kid in him. Invisibility Cloak wrapped tightly around him, he paced the halls, his only companion the sound of the various portraits shifting around as they prepared for slumber or gossiped quietly with one another. The ambient noises of the portraits, when there was no other noise in the hallway, could be slightly disturbing to someone unprepared for them, but Harry was always glad they were there. No one was likely to notice a wayward scuff of feet on stone when there was already that much background noise, and once he had managed to pull off a sneeze without attracting too much attention to himself.<p>

He paused for a moment, halfway up the winding Astronomy Tower steps, and held his breath. There were voices above him. Mind racing, he tried to think of who it could be, but as the voices and footsteps drew closer, his heartbeat slowed slightly. It was only a few stragglers from the midnight Astronomy class, a handful of students who had stayed behind to talk to Professor Sinistra, either out of sincere academic commitment or for the simple thrill of a good reason to be out of bed and in the hallways this late at night. Harry ducked into a small alcove as they passed by, hiding himself behind a very dusty-looking bust of Uric the Oddball, so as not to accidentally brush against or trip up one of the passing students. When he was sure they had receded down the stairs, he resumed his ascent, reaching the top of the Tower itself at nearly three o'clock in the morning.

He stepped out onto the ramparts of Hogwarts' highest tower, breathing deeply of the night air and pulling the hood of the Invisibility Cloak back from his head. The torches on the walls had been put out, plunging the apex of Hogwarts into darkness broken only by starlight and a sliver of moon hanging in the cloudless sky. Harry rocked back and forth on his heels, looking around for some sign of Merlin's presence or hint as to his intention. Why had he called him all the way up here?

"Ah, young master Potter, good evening," intoned the disembodied voice of the ancient wizard. Harry jumped slightly, and steadied himself against the cracked stone ramparts to stop himself from accidentally plunging over the side to his death.

"Merlin?" he whispered, fearful for a second that one of the professors was mocking him from the shadows. His fears were assuaged, however, when the aurora-like light of Merlin coalesced together and the wizard stood before him, in the flesh as much as he ever was.

"I thought this would be an appropriate place to discuss things of grave importance," the wizard said. "Not to mention, of course, the obvious benefits of its solitary location."

"Yeah, my legs thank you for all those stairs," Harry said.

"Don't be impertinent," Merlin said simply, and Harry's smile dropped off his face, although Merlin didn't seem upset. "I am here to answer the questions no doubt rattling around in your mind as best as I am able, which is a sight better than most other sources of answers you could lay hands on."

"Well," Harry said, trying to decide what to ask first, "I guess the most important question is why? Why all the secrecy, and why me? Before I came through the gateway, you said something about my…my blood?"

"Yes, Harry, you are of a very interesting and unique lineage," Merlin said. "You represent a step forward in the evolutionary process of humanity hitherto unseen."

"Right, you said something like that before. But what does that mean?"

Merlin seemed to ruminate on this for several moments.

"It means," he began cautiously, "that you bear a great responsibility to your people, both those that you care about, and those that you do not. Even your greatest enemy is a potentially valuable asset to you in the coming conflict, because it represents a threat to your species as a whole, a threat that goes beyond the human squabbling for power and dominion."

"Beyond human?" Harry said, unable to disguise the skepticism in his voice. "All the giants are quiet; the goblins seem satisfied with their vaults. Is Hermione going to instigate a House Elf rebellion or something?"

"Come now, Harry," Merlin said patiently. "You know very well that it's nothing of the sort." He took a step back, wisps of color flowing off his skin and robes and dissolving into the darkness. He raised one arm and pointed skyward, his outstretched hand flickering like a candle flame. "Why do you think I brought you here to explain all this to you?"

Harry followed the ancient wizard's gesture upward, but saw only the night sky, countless stars twinkling down at them. Slowly his mouth began to gape, and he shook his head slightly.

"You're mental," he said. "You mean to tell me this great threat is going to come from up there? From _space?_"

Merlin looked almost apologetic. "I wish, Harry, that I could tell you a truth that would fit more easily with your current understanding of your world, and humanity's place in it, but that is simply not the case." He heaved a great sigh, holding out his hands, born down with an invisible weight. "Ah, where to begin?"

"Come off it," Harry said, suddenly indignant. "You expect me to just lap this up?"

"And why not?" Merlin said, matching the growing hostility in Harry's tone. "Have I yet lied to you? Did you not pass safely through the gate, as I said you would? Have you not traveled to the past, unwound time itself? Is this not an opportunity of tremendous importance for you, to undo so much suffering and tragedy, both personal and otherwise? _Think_, Harry, before you doubt so swiftly. Imagine where you'd be if you had been so eager to disbelieve wizards and magic altogether." He stopped, his ethereal nostrils flaring as he drew heavy breaths after his digression.

Harry shuffled his feet uncomfortably, looking up at the sky for something to take his gaze away from the ghostly wizard in front of him. After a ponderous minute, he murmured, "Sorry."

"The beginning," he went on, "try starting at the beginning. Who is threatening us? How are they going to get here?"

"Well, neither of those questions is really the beginning of it, but I suppose they are important points to hit." Merlin gestured with his hands to try and better express the strange and foreign ideas to Harry. "You are…familiar with the Unforgiveable Curse, the Imperius?"

Harry nodded. "It takes over the mind, makes you do whatever the caster wants. Punishable by a life sentence."

"Indeed, it is a most heinous crime, to usurp someone else's body for your own aims. Now, the shocking truth, which you _must_ believe," he said with a fiery urgency in his usually calm eyes, "is that there is a race of beings whose entire existence mimics the Imperius Curse. They physically occupy the bodies of their victims, controlling and subduing their consciousness and utilizing them like puppets as they see fit, for they are very physically weak themselves. Humans make the easiest hosts for these creatures, and it is for this reason that your entire species on this planet is in danger."

Harry absorbed this information without displaying emotion on his face, nodding slowly while Merlin spoke, his fingers fretting absently at the hem of the Invisibility Cloak.

"I'm willing to accept that," Harry said finally, at which Merlin nodded happily. "But what I don't understand is what you want me to do about it. Even if I believe you, nobody else will believe me if I try to tell them, and it seems like if we wait for proof to arrive it will already be too late. What could I possibly do to make a difference?"

"Ah, but there is something you can do!" Merlin said happily. "You remember, of course, the gateway that you passed through to return to the past." Harry nodded. "Well, there are other gates, superficially similar to that one, but incapable of taking the traveler to a different time except under the most special of circumstances. Instead they relay objects and persons from one place, the location of one gate," he held up his hand, closed in a fist, to illustrate the theoretical location, then held up another, a foot or more away, "to a different gate. Instantaneous travel, like Apparating, but across incredibly vast distances. Imagine Apparating to the moon!"

"Ridiculous," Harry said. "How could you possibly visualize where you were going to come out unless you had already been there?"

"Exactly the reason Apparition could never be used as a substitute for gate travel," Merlin said knowingly. "Now," he added with glee, like a parent about to explain a magic trick to an eager youngster. "Imagine Apparating there…" he pointed skywards again, his arm drawing a line to one of the twinkling stars in Orion's belt. "Or there," he swung his arm over to point to the swan's head of Cygnus.

"Wicked…" Harry whispered aloud. "So where am I supposed to find one of these gates?"

"Earth is fortunate enough to possess two such gates," Merlin mused, "although I fear that accessing either of them will be perilously difficult for you. One of them is located in the frozen wastes near the South Pole, and is essentially impossible for you to reach practically; even if you could Apparate there, you wouldn't be able to power the gate. The other gate is in the hands of the United States Muggle government, secreted away in one of their secret bases, where they are studying it intently to try and unlock its secrets, something they will no doubt eventually succeed in doing."

"So we're back where we started!" Harry said in frustration. "If I can't get to them without either getting shot by Muggles or freezing to death, what am I supposed to do?"

"I trust, Harry," Merlin said plaintively, "that you will be able to find a way. You needn't worry about what to do once you have successfully located one of the gates. I can place the necessary knowledge in your mind, just as I did with the gate at the Department of Mysteries."

"So I just need to bewitch half a country's worth of Muggles armed with guns," Harry said with an exasperated shrug. "Sure, Merlin. No big deal."

"You are a far more inventive lad than you give yourself credit for, Harry. I know you'll be able to find a way."

"Wait, that's it?" Harry said.

"_Who's up there?_" came the crackling screeching voice of Argus Filch from the stairs. Merlin raised his hand in farewell and swiftly melted away into shadow and empty air. Panicking for a moment, Harry drew the hood of his Invisibility Cloak over his head and vanished from sight, just as the glowing orange eyes of Mrs. Norris peered over the top step of the stairs.

Despite himself, Harry couldn't muster the willpower necessary to tell Ron and Hermione what Merlin had told him. It all seemed too absurd, too ridiculous to fully contemplate, much less to try and vocalize. He found himself paying more attention to his schoolwork, as a way to take his thoughts away from the weight that had been placed upon him. And, of course, there was the looming deadline of the first task of the Triwizard Tournament, and Harry could feel his confidence waning as the day drew closer and closer. These feelings he did share with Ron and Hermione, but they were quick to offer words of encouragement.

"It's like you said, Harry," Ron said one morning over breakfast. "Nothing you've done has caused any real changes so far, right? So there's no reason this won't go off without a hitch."

Harry could only nod at his own words being thrown back to him, although they offered him no real comfort.

To take his mind off his troubles, he also focused on the fact that without Rita Skeeter pouring poisonous trash all over the presses, the mood at Hogwarts regarding Harry Potter wasn't nearly as hostile as it had been previously. There was, of course, a large portion of Slytherin House that continued to despise him, and he couldn't walk between classes without seeing at least one of them flashing their "POTTER STINKS" badge like it was the most hilarious joke ever conceived. The Hufflepuffs, too, were fairly frigid towards Harry Potter, remaining fiercely loyal to Cedric Diggory, the champion chosen from their own house; Harry understood and expected these reactions. The Gryffindors, however, were much more supportive of him, where previously they had only been supportive insofar as they avoided actively harassing him. The Ravenclaw students seemed by and large to be detached from the Potter-Diggory dichotomy, offering both of the boys encouragement whenever they saw them. Their approach, which seemed to Harry to be the most pragmatic of all, was that Hogwarts had been gifted with two different champions, and therefore a double shot at winning the Triwizard Cup, and it was therefore foolish to spoil such good fortune with bickering and favoritism.

Mad-Eye Moody, the disguised Death Eater, was still a point of difficulty for Harry Potter. It was difficult for him to sit through Defense Against the Dark Arts class, allowing himself to have the Imperius Charm placed on him by someone he knew to be a Death Eater so heinous he had been administered the Dementor's Kiss essentially without trial. Even more troublesome was the knowledge that the real Mad-Eye was moldering away in the seventh lock of his own magical chest, starving and suffering. Harry had resolved several times to bring him food or water, or even to free him outright in one particularly altruistic fit, but each time Hermione had counseled against it, pointing out that even if Mad-Eye only _knew_ that someone was aware of his plight on the outside, it could create a marked change in his demeanor that Barty Crouch Jr. might pick up on, and that would mean the end of their element of surprise.

On the morning of the 22nd of November, Harry fidgeted uncomfortably at breakfast, half-anticipating and half-dreading the fireplace chat he was scheduled to have with Sirius that evening. He was nervous about having changed the flow of events slightly, and that rather than a long letter Sirius had sent him only a simple note that read "_I'll be there_." What if Sirius acted differently because the idea had now been Harry's instead of his own? What if he put himself in greater danger than before and was recaptured? Harry glumly imagined his godfather, saved from death only to be condemned to the life sentence he had originally escaped, withering into nothing under the icy breath of the Dementor guards.

He decided that he would visit Hogsmeade undisguised this time, seeing as there was no general sense that he was an attention-whoring git, and no Rita Skeeter lurking about the village to make his life miserable. The trio of friends soon found themselves nursing butterbeers in the Three Broomsticks while Hermione pored over the extremely short list of SPEW members she had accumulated.

"Not giving that up yet, eh?" Ron said, raising his eyebrows as he read the list of names. "Wow, we'll have to build a clubhouse soon."

"Oh, shut it, Ron," Hermione said angrily, then looked hopefully at Harry. "Harry, about the future…SPEW works out, doesn't it? I mean, the house-elves, they're granted fair working conditions? Clothing? Wages?"

Harry thought about whether to tell her the truth or not, before deciding to err on the side of honesty. He was already being cagey with his friends about his experiences with the future. There was little sense in adding to the pile of lies and half-truths over something as inconsequential as the fate of SPEW. He shook his head with pursed lips.

"Sorry, Hermione, but it's sort of like everybody's been saying. The house-elves really do enjoy their work. If you keep up this SPEW business they're only going to get angry with you. They even stopped cleaning the Common Room for awhile, it was just Dobby in there."

"I told you!" Ron said triumphantly, while Hermione looked somewhere between violence and tears. When his victory proved to be hollow, he took a swig of butterbeer before muttering "I told you…" again.

"Hermione," Harry said, thinking fast. "The thing is, I've only lived up to the end of our Hogwarts schooling. The house elves, they have a deeply ingrained culture of servitude, it's a point of pride for them. But who knows what you'll be able to accomplish in the years after we leave Hogwarts? Even if you can't help the house-elves, you could work at the Ministry, you could campaign for the rights of magical creatures."

"S'not the end of the world, is what he's saying," Ron said, most unhelpfully, before ducking an attempted slap by Hermione.

"Thanks, _Harry_," Hermione said, glaring pointedly at Ron. "That really means a lot."

It wasn't until the trio were on their way out of the Three Broomsticks that the massive frame of Hagrid approached them, and Harry felt the half-giant's great sausagelike fingers grip his shoulder.

"Er, Harry," Hagrid said in what Harry assumed was supposed to be a low murmur, but was more of a dull rumble. "Meet me by the cabin tonight. Midnight. Wear the cloak." He winked most conspicuously before waving them off and saying loudly, "So, er, I'll talk to you later about that extra credit, eh, Hermione?"

Harry showed up early to the cabin, swathed in the Invisibility Cloak. He paced back and forth impatiently, conscious of the burning fire back in the Gryffindor Common Room, once again regretting how much he was coming to rely on his foreknowledge of events, and how lost he felt in the face of potential discrepancies. What if Sirius was early, and he didn't make it back in time? What if Sirius was early, and someone else saw him and reported it to the staff?

"You there, 'arry?" Hagrid grumbled, poking his enormous head out of the cabin door.

"Here, Hagrid," he said in a whisper, waving his invisible hand for a moment before feeling foolish.

"Righ', righ', follow along then. Got somethin' to show yer," Hagrid said before stalking away towards the giant Beauxbatons carriage. Harry began pacing after him, but slowed when he saw a pair of unfamiliar figures in the distance, standing on the lake shore. He looked back to Hagrid, who was now knocking awkwardly on the carriage door, then back to the two near the lake. One of them he was almost certain was Dumbledore, but he didn't recognize the other, at least not in the dark like this. Had they been there before, and he had simply not realized? Harry wasn't convinced, and with only a moment's hesitation, left Hagrid behind to take Maxine into the Forbidden Forest, and set off towards the lake, being careful not to make too much noise in the grass, or to catch any conspicuous burrs on the bottom edge of the Cloak. As he drew nearer to the two figures, he confirmed that one was indeed Dumbledore; the Headmaster was engaged in quiet but earnest conversation with a tall man in black robes.

"…assure you that nothing impertinent has been going on at Hogwarts, especially not anything that would warrant the attention of your department," Dumbledore was explaining calmly as Harry drew near enough to hear them.

"Headmaster, I assure you that I and the wizards in my department are very good at our work, and I can similarly assure you that the energies released by the event in question point very clearly to Hogwarts." The voice sounded familiar somehow to Harry, high and stern with a twinge of cruelty.

"I could be more helpful to you, I'm sure," Dumbledore said in an even tone, "If I knew anything about the event to which you are referring. You're being quite cagey about it, considering you're asking me for help in the matter."

"Don't be a fool!" said the man, obviously incensed. "You know full well that I can't possibly discuss that with you." Harry had to stop himself from drawing in a sharp gasp; he recognized the voice now, with a sinking feeling of dread, like cold water pouring down his legs and filling his shoes.

"Of course, Artemius, of course," Dumbledore said. "But I still don't see how one of my students could possibly be involved in such powerful magic without my knowing, especially given the wards placed upon the school to seclude it from the outside world."

"If not one of your students," Artemius said with a threatening edge, "then perhaps one of your staff. Perhaps even you, Headmaster. The crux of the matter is that I've been given authority by the Ministry to stay here, on campus, until I've gotten to the bottom of this problem, or exhausted my options." The Unspeakable from the Death Chamber narrowed his predatory eyes, while Dumbledore seemed unmoved by the veiled threats.

_Well_, Harry thought to himself, his mouth suddenly dry. _This was certainly something different_.


	9. Chapter 9

**Harry Potter and the Veil of Time**

Chapter Nine: I'm Serious... Sirius

By Cybergades

* * *

><p>Harry made his way in a daze across the Hogwarts grounds, a chill wind whipping the Invisibility Cloak around his ankles. He felt like someone had punched him in the gut; an Unspeakable sniffing around Hogwarts, looking for him? This meant that everything that happened after this point was unpredictable, not to mention that a shady Ministry official snooping around Hogwarts was very likely to spook Barty Crouch, Jr., which could ruin Harry's element of surprise at the end of the year. Torn between worry and anger, he took off the cloak as he approached the Gryffindor Common Room, mumbling the password and slumping into one of the overstuffed chairs by the fireside. Ron and Hermione had already gone to bed, since Harry had spilled the beans about what Hagrid wanted to show him before he had left, and neither of them was expecting him to return with any further surprises.<p>

He was so distracted by his worries that he didn't even notice at first when the fire started to flare up, the glowing embers and logs shifting with a crackle of sparks to form the face of his godfather. When at last he looked up and noticed, he started with a slight jerk, before remembering that this at least was something that was supposed to be happening.

"S-sorry, Sirius, I didn't see you there," he stammered. "How are you?"

"Never mind me," Sirius said, his voice crackling slightly along with the wood, "how are you?"

Harry drew a deep breath before he began to speak. He tried to stumble his way through a full explanation of everything that had happened, frequently stopping to correct himself or to debark on tangents. Sirius, to his own credit, remained silent and attentive throughout Harry's winding tale, sparks occasionally flying out of the top of his head when he nodded at some point Harry was making.

"…and to make matters worse, I have to fight a dragon in a few days as the first task," he finished. "And there's an Unspeakable lurking around the school, he followed me here."

"Well," Sirius said, but then didn't say anything else for several minutes.

"Have you told Dumbledore anything?" he said at last, and Harry breathed an inward sigh of relief that his immediate reaction wasn't disbelief.

"Not yet," he replied.

"Well you need to," Sirius said urgently, "and soon. You're definitely going to need his help before all this is over, especially if the Ministry is snooping around. Don't tell them anything, by the way. There are enough ex-Death Eaters in the Department of Mysteries that I would be very careful about telling any of them anything. What's this one's name? Do you know?"

"Artemius…Artemius something," Harry said. "Tall, kind of a gawky bloke."

"Haven't heard of him, but that might just mean he was just a bootlicker, somebody the Death Eaters in Azkaban wouldn't have bothered to mention. He might just be doing his job, but don't take any chances. At the very least, an official Ministry inquiry into studying your time travel will eat into valuable time. At the worst, giving Voldemort the knowledge that he could travel back in time is a frightening prospect."

"Merlin said the portal wouldn't work for just anyone, something about my bloodline."

"That's not really helpful," Sirius mused. "Voldemort's obsessed with blood purity, he'd be convinced that he'd be able to use the gate, and even if that wasn't true, he would spill a lot of pointless blood trying to find out."

"You're probably right," Harry said. "Although the gate would most likely kill him."

"At what cost?" Sirius said. "And are you willing to take the risk that it actually might _work_?" The fire popped and sputtered as Sirius shuddered. "Dumbledore, Harry. Talk to Dumbledore."

"I will, I will," Harry promised. "After this first task is over, I'll go to see him."

"Take care of yourself, Harry," Sirius said. "I'll try to make some sense of what you've told me and see if I can come up with anything useful for you."

The face of his godfather slowly broke apart and faded into the softly glowing embers of the late-night common room fire, and Harry sat up for several more minutes, lost in thought.

Harry might have been the first student to hear about Hogwarts' new arrival, but word traveled fast down the stony corridors, and it seemed like by the time he sleepily descended the stairs to the Great Hall the next morning, everyone from Ravenclaw's towers to the dankest Slytherin dungeon-dweller was abuzz with rumors and speculation about the creepy-looking Ministry employee stalking the halls of Hogwarts, having quiet but hostile conversations with professors and eying everyone he came across with suspicion or distaste.

"I heard he's from Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures," Ron said around a crunchy mouthful of toast.

"Really?" Hermione said, looking towards the staff table nervously. "You don't think Hagrid…"

"Not this time," Harry said.

"What then?" Ron said, punctuating himself with a loud chomp. "Magical Law Enforcement?"

"Worse, if that's even possible," Harry said with a grimace. "He's an Unspeakable, from the Death Chamber."

"You mean he's here for you?"

"Aren't they always?" Ron said, rolling his eyes. Harry felt a momentary pang of guilt.

"Yes," he said, ignoring Ron's comment, "and if he finds out it was me that caused the gate to open in the Death Chamber, I'll never be able to get anything done, I'll be spirited away to the Department of Mysteries and interrogated until Voldemort decides to show up and kill everyone."

"But he's got no way of knowing it was you," Hermione reasoned. "The trail probably dead-ends at Hogwarts, there's so much magic going on just keeping the place hidden from Muggles, never mind all the classes and tests, any sort of signature you left behind weeks ago would have been long gone by now."

"I hope you're right," Harry said, gazing absently across the Great Hall. He was about to get lost in another futile session of pondering his options when his eye caught Cedric Diggory leaving the Great Hall.

"Crap, that's right!" he exclaimed, jumping to his feet. "Cedric still doesn't know about the dragons, he's the only one!"

"More of an advantage for you, mate," Ron said.

"Come off it, Ron, Cedric would do the same if the situations were reversed. I'll catch up with you guys later," he said, leaving them with a wave and walking quickly to catch up with the Hufflepuff champion.

"Cedric!" he called after the upper classman, who turned and looked back curiously at the sound of his own name, jostled from one side to the other by a gaggle of passing students. When he saw Harry waving, he gave a cautious sort of wave back, moving towards him slightly until they met in the middle of the corridor.

"Harry," he said with a nod. "What's up?"

"Been preparing much for the first test?" Harry asked, trying to sound nonchalant.

"Well, hard to know what to prepare for, isn't it?" Cedric said with a sheepish smile and a shrug. "I don't know any way to practice being brave, and all they said was that the task was a test of our bravery, so-"

"It's dragons," Harry said in a low voice. Cedric stopped talking, tilting his head quizzically.

"S'what?" he asked, squinting slightly.

"Dragons," Harry repeated, glancing over one shoulder to check for eavesdroppers. "I saw Hagrid helping to contain them, last night. Karkaroff and Maxine know as well, which means you can bet Fleur and Krum are aware by now." Cedric nodded in agreement, but seemed uneasy.

"Alright, alright, but why tell me?"

"Because," Harry said, almost defensively. "It wouldn't be fair otherwise, would it?" He shrugged. "It's barely fair now, come to think of it. Anyway, just being a good sport and all that. I'm sure you can figure a way past a rampaging dragon or two, eh?"

"Right…sure…" Cedric said, rubbing the back of his head and looking as though he had just been appointed to jury duty. "Bloody dragons…"

"You'll do fine," Harry said, in what he hoped was a helpful and not a patronizing tone. Turning on his heel, he left Cedric to ponder his way through the dragon problem, but he was stopped several hallways away on his way to the Gryffindor tower by a piercing voice.

"Mister Potter, I believe."

He winced. He was becoming increasingly familiar with that voice, although it appeared this was to be the first time it was actually directed towards him. Trying not to look too much like he had been caught in the middle of something, he turned to look at the towering figure behind him.

"S-sir," he said, feigning ignorance. "I am, sir. Harry Potter, that is."

"Your reputation precedes you," Artemius said, one corner of his mouth turning up slightly in a mirthless smile. Harry felt like a mouse being observed by a cat.

"I'm sorry?" he said, unsure of how to proceed. If Artemius knew anything, wouldn't he have been arrested by now?

"People tell me you run in some pretty strange circles, Potter," Artemius said, stroking at his chin thoughtfully. "Care to comment?"

"People in Slytherin tell you?" Harry asked, picturing Malfoy's smug face.

"Students say you were pretty closely involved in the Chamber of Secrets being opened in your second year here at Hogwarts," Artemius continued, ignoring Harry. "_And_ there's this business of you somehow bamboozling your way into the Triwizard Tournament."

"I didn't put my name into the goblet!" Harry said, now incensed.

"Regardless of what can or cannot be proven," Artemius said, raising his hands disarmingly, "you have a history of being surrounded by some very powerful magic, Mister Potter, very powerful magic indeed, and unprecedented magic at that. You are the only one to survive the Killing Curse, is that not correct?"

"That's right," Harry replied through gritted teeth.

"Very interesting," Artemius said, before retracting his hands into his robes and pulling himself back, looming even taller over Harry.

"You know, boy, if there's anything you'd like to share with me…anything you feel you need to get off your chest about you or someone close to you, I can promise leniency…"

Harry made a show of screwing up his brow and thinking for several moments.

"No, I can't think of anything, sir, sorry. Although if you've got any tips on this whole Triwizard situation, I'm all ears."

"I can promise leniency _now_, Potter," Artemius said, thrusting a bony finger into Harry's face. "But I can't promise that offer will be there indefinitely. If I discover-" he opened his mouth, but thought better of it, and shut it again. Harry wondered if he was about to spill some sort of detail about his work in the Death Chamber. He realized that he was unsure if Unspeakables were simply forbidden from talking about their work, or if there was some sort of enchantment at work literally _preventing_ them from divulging any information. Artemius glared at Harry for a few more seconds before stalking away, robes billowing behind him like curtains in an open window. Harry shuddered, trying to shake the sensation of the Unspeakable's presence off him, and swiftly returned to Gryffindor Tower.

"You think we should _what?_" Ron asked. "Harry, are you hearing this?"

"What?" Hermione said. "He's locked up in that chest, miserable and starving to death!"

"Hermione," Harry said. "We've been over this. If we do anything to help Mad-Eye Moody, it could tip off Crouch, and we'd be-"

"We'd be what, Harry? Crouch already had an Unspeakable lurking around the campus, he could get spooked any day now, and he'd probably just kill Mad-Eye then, we have to help him!"

"The Unspeakable is exactly why we can't help," Harry said. "Crouch will be extra cautious, extra wary of everything around him. In that, he always played the perfect Mad-Eye Moody, he had the paranoia thing down to a tee. The only downside is, I don't think I can ever go into his office, if he ever takes me aside in there it'll be trouble."

"Why?" Ron asked, puzzled.

"It's his…he's got this mirror," Harry tried to explain. "He called it a Foe Glass-"

"Oh!" Hermione piped up. "A Foe Glass? That means he'll be able to track the movements and proximity of all his enemies. It's a very powerful sort of Dark Detector," she nodded knowingly.

"Thank you. Hermione." Harry said, trying to brush off her interruption. "The figures in the glass are usually all shadowy, they didn't really appear clearly until they were right outside the door last time, so I figure as long as I stay away from his office, he might not realize that I'm one of his enemies, that I know his secret."

"But he's a professor, Harry," Hermione said, a worried edge on her voice. "What are you going to do if he calls you aside after class? Or if he just finds a reason to give you detention?"

"Well, I'll just have to play it by ear, then," Harry said. His two friends did not look comforted by this plan of action. "What? What do you want me to say, that I have the perfect plan to deal with a Polyjuicing madman in a position of authority? I'm doing the best I can here!"

"We know, Harry," Hermione said. "We're just worried about you. Isn't there something we should be doing to help, instead of just waiting around like this?"

"I think you might be right," Harry said with a sigh. "Sirius agrees with you two; he thinks I should tell Dumbledore as soon as possible. I'm going to wait, though, until after this dragon business is finished. I know I've done it already, but it still makes me nervous just thinking about it. I don't know if you guys know this or not," he said, eyes on Hermione, "but dragons are really bloody _big_."

Ron and Hermione, who had been staring at him as though he was about to deliver some more bad news from the future, looked on blankly for a few moments. Ron was the first to break the silence, a husky chuckle escaping from his mouth, quickly growing into a raucous laughter. Hermione joined in, the nervous tension in the room fueling their guffawing. Harry almost laughed hard enough to forget about the troubles ahead.

The last few days before the challenge passed by quickly, and despite his constant claims of a need for preparation, Harry found himself lounging around the Common Room more often than not. Deep down, he realized that his desire to wait until after the first task to approach Dumbledore was born just as much of procrastination as of prudence. Even though he had an extremely stressful and intense fourth year at Hogwarts, having a second go of it was like a reclamation of his childhood, before he had been so directly exposed to death and harsh reality. It was a sad comment on his life, he sometimes thought to himself, that an encounter with a dragon represented escapist stress avoidance for him.

It happened suddenly, despite weeks of anticipation. One minute, Harry was walking by the Great Hall, and the next, Professor McGonagall had an arm around his shoulder and was shepherding him towards the outdoors.

"Come come, now, Potter, it's almost time for the first task. You have to meet with the other champions to discover what you'll be doing."

"Now, the important thing is not to panic," she said as they made their way out of the castle. "There are wizards standing by in case anything gets out of hand, so just try your best, and nobody will think any less of you…are you feeling alright?"

"Fine," Harry said. "Never better."

McGonagall hurried him towards the champion's tent and inside, wishing him one last bit of good luck before departing. The tent-flap closed behind him, and Harry walked forward into the canvas enclosure, following the sound of Ludo Bagman's voice.

"Harry! Good-O!" Bagman practically shouted as Harry drew near. "Come in, come in, and make yourself at home!" Harry exchanged nods or glances with the other three champions, rubbing his clamming hands together.

"Now that all four of the champions are here," Bagman said, "we can explain the first task." Reaching into his robes, he drew forth a familiar-looking purple silk sack. "You will each be reaching into this pouch and drawing one of the…erm…objects inside. There are different varieties you see. And that will represent the, erm, the _thing_ you have to face. And, oh, what was it…oh, yes, your task will be to collect the golden egg!"

None of the other three champions showed any interest or recognition. Harry couldn't resist.

"The golden egg, sir?" he asked, feigning a child's innocence. "But what does it _mean?_"

"All in due time, lad, all in due time," Bagman replied obliviously. "Now then, ladies first." He held out the bag to Fleur Delacour, while outside the tent Harry could hear the dull thunder if hundreds of footsteps filling the stadium in which they would be competing. Fleur reached one trembling hand into the bag, biting her lower lip as she drew forth the small model of the Welsh Green, the number "2" hanging around its neck.

"Oh my goodness!" Harry said loudly. "_Dragons_, Ludo? Are you sure this is safe?"

Ludo was quick to launch into a rambling and nigh-incoherent speech about the safety precautions having been taken for the events of the day. As he stumbled over his own words, Harry caught Cedric's eye, and noticed that the upperclassman was trembling with the effort of not bursting into laughter. He flashed him a smile as Karkaroff reached into the bag and pulled out the Swedish Short-Snout, the number "1" dragon.

"Wait," Harry said softly, his smile faltering for a moment.

"Here goes nothing," Cedric said, plunging his hand into the bag and coming up with-

"The Hungarian Horntail?" Harry blurted out loud, staring at the dragon in Cedric's hand, the number "4" dangling innocuously off its neck.

"Know your dragons, do you, Potter?" Bagman said with a smile.

"Yes, well, um," Harry said, his mind fighting to come up with something believable. "It's just, you know, Ron's brother Charlie works with dragons, and I got a chance to talk with him over the summer, it's all quite interesting, really."

"How fortunate for you," Krum said drily.

"Well," Harry said finally, trying to quell the rising panic inside him. "Just the one left, I suppose." He reached into the bag, feeling the squirming figurine inside, and drew forth the Chinese Fireball, which hissed at him softly as it scratched at the number "3" hung around its neck.

"Very good, everyone. Now, then, Krum, you're up first, so just wait for the whistle and go on out when you're called. Now…Harry…could I have a quick word outside?"

"Sure," Harry said reluctantly, and let Bagman walk him out of the tent towards the nearby treeline.

"Feeling alright, Harry?" Ludo said kindly. "Anything I can get you?"

"Nothing, I'm fine," Harry said guardedly. Ludo reached over to punch him softly in the side.

"There there, lad, I'm just trying to help you, you know."

"Don't," Harry said brusquely. "I have it under control, you know."

"Course you do, lad, of course you do. I'm not saying you _need _my help, or anything of that sort, merely that should you _wish_ it, I might be able to-"

"Set me up to win?" Harry asked pointedly. "Stand to make a killing off the Triwizard Tournament, do you, Mister Bagman?"

Ludo chuckled sheepishly, obviously taken aback. Harry continued.

"I'm sure the Gringotts goblins would love to learn about your whereabouts and activities." At this Ludo Bagman's face went pale, and Harry knew that he had him in his grasp. "You know, on second thought, Ludo, perhaps you can help me in some way."

"O-of course, lad, anything," Bagman said.

"We'll talk later," Harry said, turning away from the Ministry employee. "I have a dragon egg to steal."


	10. Chapter 10

**Harry Potter and the Veil of Time**

Chapter Ten: The First Task

By Cybergades

* * *

><p>Harry could hear the crowd roaring outside as he ducked back under the tent flap. Cedric nodded at him and smiled, but Fleur looked distracted, her eyes focusing on some patch of ground in the corner of the tent while one leg jostled up and down repeatedly. She rolled her wand back and forth between her fingers nervously. Harry heard a terrifying roar, presumably from the dragon, followed by the crowd redoubling their cheering. After a few moments, he heard Ludo's voice, magically magnified, coming from the stands.<p>

"Ladies and Gentlemen, Hogwarts students and staff and their distinguished guests! Welcome to the first challenge of the Triwizard Tournament! No sense beating around the bush; you can all see the ferocious beast before you, the Swedish Short-Snout. And here comes our first competitor, the man you all know and love, Durmstrang's own Viktor Krum!"

The crowd thundered with cheering, and Harry tried to imagine what might be going on out there. Everything was different now, except for Fleur, who would still be facing the Welsh Green. Harry hadn't stopped to consider the possibility of something like the bag drawing throwing a wrench into his continuity simply by forcing a decision based on pure chance.

"Nervous?" Cedric said.

"Maybe," Harry replied. "To be honest, I was uh…hoping for the Horntail, personally."

"Come off it," Cedric said, waving him off, then scoffed. "Seriously? I'd trade with you if they'd let us, but somehow I don't think that would go over well."

"And he's done it! Krum's gotten the golden egg!" Ludo's voice, slightly muffled by the walls of the tent, rang out, along with the screams of the crowd. Fleur took several deep breaths and prepared to enter the stadium.

"Good luck out there," Harry said. She looked at him, wide-eyed and startled, but her expression slowly softened, and she gave him a tiny nod, clutching her wand tightly in her hand. When the whistle blew, she stepped forward, all the fear evaporating from her as she strode purposefully towards the first task.

"Harry, listen…" Cedric said once they were alone in the tent. "About the dragons…"

"Don't mention it," Harry said with a small shrug. "Just putting everyone on an equal footing."

"Well, erm…thanks, mate," Cedric said. "I would've been totally blindsided if it hadn't been for you. How'd you find out anyway?"

"It seems like everybody who doesn't want me kicked out of the tournament wants to help me cheat," Harry said. "It's not as fun as it sounds. Really, though, don't mention it. You'd do the same for me."

A look of pain passed over Cedric's face.

"The terrible thing is, before you did that for me, I don't really know that I would. Beating you, in the Quidditch match last year, it felt good. You're Harry Potter, man."

"I don't see why that matters," Harry said defensively.

"You wouldn't," Cedric said. "I'm Cedric Diggory, Harry, and nobody knows what that means, and even fewer people knew before I beat you last year."

"Cedric, before I came to Hogwarts I was nothing in the Muggle world, my aunt and uncle couldn't have cared less about me if they tried, and I think they did, to be honest."

Cedric shrugged, but Harry could tell he hadn't anticipated this answer.

"Well," he said awkwardly, "the point, I guess, is that…thank you."

"Really, it was nothing," Harry said, as the crowd rose in a crescendo outside the tent.

"And Fleur Delacour has obtained her golden egg!" Ludo Bagman's voice warbled through the tent walls. Harry swallowed hard, rolling his neck and rubbing his hands together to make sure they weren't getting sweaty. The last thing he needed was for his wand to slip out of his fingers while he was facing a dragon. For a moment, everything seemed like it was getting quiet, like it was going to die down, a great big false alarm, and Harry was going to wake up in the burnt-out wreckage of Hogwarts school and have to go put on a strong face and bury his friends and loved ones.

And then the whistle blew, and Harry snapped to attention, striding out of the tent and into the stadium. The Chinese Fireball was at the opposite end of the arena, crouched low over its clutch of eggs, and it snapped and hissed wildly at the crowd in the stands above it. Though definitely a massive beast, it was definitely much smaller than he remembered the Hungarian Horntail being, maybe half as long, although much wirier and with a look of sharp cunning in its eyes. Holding his wand firmly, Harry pointed away from the stadium, in what he hoped what the right direction.

"_Accio Firebolt!_" he shouted, at which point the dragon finally noticed him, and Harry felt the ground shake as it charged towards him. He scrambled away from it, taking cover behind several rocks and listening to the loud jangling of the chains keeping it from flying out of the stadium. It sounded like it was being kept on one side of the stadium, and as long as he remained where he was he wouldn't be in any immediate danger. Chancing a glance around the rocks, he was forced to pull his head back almost immediately as a mushroom-shaped ball of fire plowed into the side of the rocks with enough force to blast away several small pieces. Harry shielded his eyes as nearly red-hot rock dust was scattered across his face.

"Come on…" he said to himself, his own voice drowned out by the screams of the dragon and the harsh scraping of claws on metal and stone. Harry's eyes roved across the sky. Had he somehow botched the spell? He felt nauseous even considering it, but his stomach and spirits lifted when he saw his broomstick soaring over the heights of the crowd towards him. The crowd noticed it, too, and their volume rose with their excitement. Taking a deep breath, Harry broke from cover, dashing towards where the broom zoomed low to the ground and practically throwing himself onto it. He heard the crowd gasp and felt the rush of hot air behind him, the hairs on the back of his neck standing up to be promptly singed off by the passing burst of dragon fire. When he kicked off the ground, he felt his broom wobbly slightly, and looked back to see that the bristles of the broomstick were ablaze, caught alight by the very near miss from the dragon. Gritting his teeth, he tried to put out the fire with the sleeve of his robes, but that nearly caused him to fall from the broom altogether, so instead he focused on trying to retrieve the golden egg as quickly as possible.

The Chinese Fireball was standing a good fifteen feet away from its clutch of eggs, but it was directly between Harry and his prize, rocking side to side on its talons, wings flexing excitedly as its eyes tried to follow the boy on the flaming broomstick. Harry lurched quickly to one side, doing a neat barrel roll as the dragon coughed up another ball of fire in his direction. Coming out of the roll, though, his Firebolt continued to misbehave, its handling slugging and unresponsive. Harry tried to pull up, but he found himself drifting towards the top of the dragon's head. If he couldn't correct his course, he would plow straight down the dragon's throat, which would no doubt impress the crowd greatly, even if it would earn him fairly dismal posthumous marks on the task. Harry clutched his wand so hard he feared it would snap in two as the dragon opened its mouth and he saw the angry glow of its flames making their way up its throat swiftly.

"_Protego!_" he shouted, almost reflexively, as he passed just inches above the dragon's face. He could feel the heat even through the Shield Charm as the fire erupted directly onto his protective spell, spreading around him and sizzling evilly before slowly dissipating into the air. Harry could feel the air nearly sucked out of his lungs as the intense heat of the surrounding fire consumed all the air around him. When the flames cleared, he had to quickly jerk his broom upward as it scraped against a rock outcropping. Swerving wildly, he careened towards the dragon eggs, hand outstretched towards the golden prize. He felt himself pushed forward as dragon fire impacted on his Shield Charm again, and he mentally thanked himself for learning to do at least one spell extremely well. He actually fell off his broom into the dragon's nest, and had to scoop up the golden egg and remount his broom with one hand, soaring into the air as the crowd screamed themselves hoarse.

"And that makes the quickest finish so far by Mister Potter, utilizing a textbook Summoning spell and what looks to be a Shield Charm well beyond a typical fourth-year, well done, well done!" Bagman was shouting, Harry's chest heaved as he tried to regain his breath. He hadn't realized how much the dragon fire had nearly suffocated him when it engulfed his shielding spell. Harry wondered nervously how he could have handled that situation the first time he was a Fourth Year.

"Congratulations, Harry," Professor McGonagall said in his ear as he climbed the stands to where a seat had been saved for him. He turned to catch the tail-end of a rare smile from the aged professor before finding his seat, next to Fleur in the stands. Krum was next to her, looking surly, but she smiled at Harry.

"You did very well," she said with her thick accent. "Better zhen I did, I should think."

"Well, I didn't get to see, but I'm sure you were great," Harry said. "I wish I could have gone earlier, waiting down in the tent was terrible."

"Mais oui!" the quarter-veela girl proclaimed. "I was only down zair for ze first round and it was enough to make me panic!" she giggled slightly. "But all for nothing of course," she added, "your Shield Charm was pretty good, but…" she smiled somewhat condescendingly; Harry had forgotten that she could be like this.

The crowd got a little anxious as several handlers began leading the Chinese Fireball away, and brought in the Hungarian Horntail, trying to calm it with various distractions and placation's as they led it to the clutch of eggs, replacing the missing spot with a new golden egg and backing away slowly. A bit too slowly, Harry thought when one of the handlers got his robes torn by the snap-crack of the Horntail's namesake lethal whip of a tail.

Cedric took a few moments to emerge from the tent when the whistle was finally blown for his entrance, and Harry could see him stop cold at the sight of the Horntail, almost tripping over himself as he hesitated. The Horntail noticed him almost immediately, and stood cautiously near its eggs, its tail thrashing back and forth threateningly behind it. Skirting the edge of the arena, Cedric kept his distance from the dragon, finding himself what looked like a fairly large stone. Mumbling with his wand, he touched the tip of it to the edge of the stone, and the crowd gasped slightly as the rock began to twist and warp, gradually taking the shape and consistency of a small Labrador. Looking slightly guilty, Cedric clapped his hands, shouting and waving his arms, which spooked the newly-minted dog and caused it to run towards the Horntail slightly. When the Horntail moved towards it, however, the dog quickly began to panic, which only drew the dragon's attention even more so.

Cedric used this opportunity to slip around the edge of the stadium, eyes on the twitching horned tail hovering near the clutch of eggs. The iron of the chains holding the Horntail in place clanked loudly as it strained at the edge of its restraints. Cedric broke into a run when a gout of flame erupted from the dragon's mouth, incinerating the puppy almost immediately and eliciting cries of dismay from the audience. Harry wondered, for the first time, he realized, the degree to which objects Transfigured into animals were able to feel pain, or learn, or reproduce. He hoped not, for the sake of the boulder on the ground (which had now reverted to its previously earthen state, albeit significantly scorched). Cedric ducked under the swinging tail and made a dash for the golden egg, but was forced to abort his attempt and dive behind a nearby cluster of stones to avoid the swiping claws on the Horntail. His initial momentum gone, Diggory was reduced to holing up against the rocks where the Horntail's scrabbling claws couldn't reach him. Fortunately, he was too close to the eggs for the dragon to be willing to simply roast him alive, and he was eventually able to get his golden egg by coaxing a thick cloud of fog out of the tip of his wand over the course of nearly fifteen minutes. It was a bit of an anti-climax and a sad loss of momentum, but Harry cheered loudly along with everyone else when the Hufflepuff emerged from the fog bank with the golden egg under his arm.

Harry took second yet again, when the scores were dealt out, with Krum leading, Fleur in third, and an unfortunate Cedric bringing up the rear. His fellow Gryffindors were ecstatic, and Harry tried to join in the festivities and revelry that evening, but all he could think about was that now he had no excuse; he had to move forward, into the true unknown. He had to talk to Dumbledore, and try to find some way of reaching the gateways Merlin had told him about.

* * *

><p>The Ministry of Magic was always a somewhat breathtaking prospect for someone taking it all in, especially for the first time. Even the most jaded employee holed up in an office dealing with Muggle relations had to admit that there was something cheer-inducing about stepping into the building and feeling the hum of magical energy in the floor beneath your feet, the ecstatic sensation that many like minded individuals were all working towards the betterment of the wizarding world within those walls. Even as Minister of Magic, Cornelius Fudge still felt like a Junior Minister in the Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes every time he emerged from an entry fireplace.<p>

Witches and Wizards tipped their hats to him as he passed, and Fudge felt in particularly good spirits. The first task of the Triwizard Tournament had gone splendidly, he had heard, which was good news for potential cooperation between the disparate institutions of magical education. Fudge had Barty Crouch in his ear lately, yammering on about the importance of international relations between wizarding communities, and Fudge had to admit, something like the Triwizard Tournament made an excellent proxy conflict by which Europe's magical communities could compete with one another while still maintaining a friendly sort of environment that would, he hoped, facilitate the sharing of ideas. Fudge was an idealist as much as he was overweight; just enough to keep him popular with the people.

"Good morning, Mister Fudge, sir!" said Agatha Shelderforth as Fudge exited an elevator onto the lush purple carpeting of the primary level of the Ministry. He smiled warmly at his Junior Assistant, a spritely young girl only a few years out of Hogwarts. Fudge had found that placing people like Agatha around him was an important part of managing his image; they brought a steady supply of enthusiasm to his office, such that the name of Cornelius Fudge would continue to be associated with warm smiles and genuine excitement for the prospect of civil service.

"Good morning to you too, Miss Shelderforth," Cornelius said, doffing his hat to the pretty young witch. "Everything fall apart in my absence, I suspect?" he added with a wink.

"Absolute disaster, sir," Agatha said, laughing perhaps a bit too eagerly at Fudge's joke. "Barnabus finally went off his broomstick and started offering Muggles tours of the building. The good news is that none of them could afford the ten Galleons to get in."

The two shared a laugh before Agatha passed a handful of scrolls into Fudge's hands.

"These are the minutes from the last gathering of the Wizangamot," she said, ruffling through various papers. "And the Bulgarian Minister wants to have lunch with you, to celebrate the ongoing success of the Triwizard Tournament."

"Lovely," Fudge said. Nothing like a workday that went as expected.

"Oh, and a reporter from the Daily Prophet is in your office, sir," Agatha added, somewhat uncertainly. "She seemed to be very interested in doing an interview with you. I told her to wait outside, but she was fairly insistent."

"Probably just a fluff piece," Cornelius said with a wave of his hand. "Very well, then, Agatha, off you go dear."

The Junior Assistant to the Minister curtsied slightly before scurrying off to help another staff wizard who was tottering dangerously under a mountain of scrolls. Fudge waddled a little further down the hallway to the rich mahogany door of his own office. Shutting the door behind him, he turned, eyes widening suddenly as he saw Rita Skeeter seated on the edge of his deck, one leg crossed over the other, glancing at him over the corner of her horn rims.

"Minister," she said, with a level of familiarity Fudge couldn't remember ever sharing with her. "Rita Skeeter,_ Daily Prophet_."

"I know who you are, madam," he said slowly. "I was under the impression that you were doing a cultural study of Central American witches and warlocks, is that not correct?"

"Oh, I knocked that story out in a week," Rita said with a laugh. "Oh, but it's good to be back in Britain, Minister, and it's good to see you again. I hear we're having some moderate success with the Triwizard Tournament."

"Yes, but…that's the story you gave up, isn't it? They put a junior reporter at the _Prophet_ on the assignment, I remember it's the niece of someone on my staff, he was very excited."

"I did give it up, yes," Rita said with a perfect porcelain smile. "I was hoping to cover the issue from the angle of policy, how it affects our relationships with other wizarding communities. I was hoping to get an exclusive with you, maybe even hear some of the information the general public isn't privy to, something juicy to really spice up the story."

"Young lady, I don't know about that," Cornelius said in consternation. "I can give you a few minutes for an interview about the tournament, but I don't know that discussing diplomatic relations this freshly initiated is the best-"

"Come on now, Minister," Rita said, a mischievous edge in her voice. She rose from the desk and approached Fudge. "Don't you think you could spare me a little something? For the readers?" Leaning in close to the portly wizard, she hissed out a warm breath, and a faint purple fog traced its way from her lips to the Minister's mouth. Cornelius Fudge felt very relaxed and content all of a sudden, and he could swear he saw Rita Skeeter's eyes glowing in the most amusingly peculiar way, moments before a pleasant warmth overtook his brain, and he found thinking too hard about anything to be altogether disagreeable.


	11. Chapter 11

**Important Author Notes - PLEASE READ:  
><strong>

I've received quite a few mixed reviews about this new version of HP The Veil Of Time, So i think it's time i address some of the commonly reoccurring misunderstandings and concerns that seem to keep popping up in these reviews. I Hope you'll all take the time to actually read this so that you can get a feel for where I'm coming from.

OK Let's start with the most commonly reoccurring element first... GINNY.

With this version of the story i have aimed for a more realistic telling of the events. I wanted to explore more accurately how things would likely play out if Harry truly found himself living in a war torn world where most of his loved ones were dead only to have some mysterious character claiming to be Merlin show up and offer him a way to do it all over again.

So here's Harry, who has just lost the only woman he has truly loved and as a result he's pretty screwed up emotionally at the moment and not likely thinking properly as you might imagine, and so he grasps onto that slim chance that it might really be true and jumps before he looks so to speak.

Now put yourself in his position and try and ask yourself how you'd react if you suddenly found yourself back in the past, reliving events that to you, had already happened years earlier, seeing people who moments before had been lying dead in the great hall. Throw into that the uncertainty of the future along with the vague haunting threat of the unknown that Merlin has alluded to... Can you honestly tell me that Harry would have it all together. Frankly, if it were me... I'd be out of my bloody mind.

So I've tried to portray that. He's confused, and he's trying desperately to roll with the punches so to speak. He's arrived in the past at a very chaotic moment and events are already starting to spiral out of control. He's not really had the chance to think about the more personal aspects of his life except for perhaps in passing and at the same time he's also vaguely aware of the fact that he has to avoid acting to out of character.

In the past, He'd barely said 5 words to Ginny in his fourth year... If he were to suddenly worship the ground she walked on people would start to ask questions. But mostly, it's not conscious at all. he's just overwhelmed with what's going on and hasn't had enough time to settle into this new reality and allow himself to relax enough to enjoy the wonderful new opportunities he's been given.

So all that said, i encourage you all to stick with this story. Things will start to heat up here in the coming chapters and Harry will start to interact with Ginny alot more as well. This is a Romance/Adventure story and Ginny will play a very significant part in it starting very soon.

And now... On with the show.

* * *

><p><strong>Harry Potter and the Veil of Time<strong>

Chapter Eleven:

By Cybergades

* * *

><p>The moon struggled to peer through the thick cover of dark clouds, which, haloed in its silvery light, drifted slowly over the British wilderness. Below, a few flecks of silver trembled in the black waters that reflected the overcast sky, while the piles of cut stone struck out against the sky like dark fingers grasping at the heavens. Among the heaps of building materials strode a figure, stepping carefully over the uneven ground. Parts of the hillside had been recently leveled off, leaving wide expanses of the ground flattened and cleared of grass and rocks. The stones had been laid out here, forming the beginnings of a building's foundation, and it was out onto this field of leveled brick that the figure crept, a smear of shadow on the ground.<p>

It reached a location that seemed to suit it and dropped to one knee, reaching out with a careful hand to feel at the stone. Satisfied with whatever information it gleaned from this, it reached into the recesses of its robes and drew forth a curious, crystalline device that hummed with power. Within the depths of this device lay untold leagues of space, tucked away from the rest of the world and humming with a hidden power ready to be put to use. Moving aside one of the stones, the lonely figure slipped the crystal underneath the foundation of stone, scraping out a depression in the earth and fitting the device snug within it. Then, with a slight motion, he set something in the crystalline object alive, and it began to let out a low thrumming purr.

Protrusions and cables burst from the device, burrowing into the earth and stone around it with equal ease and binding the device into place with the nascent castle and the hillside itself. There it would remain, melding with the growing architecture and layers of magic that would soon surround it, biding its time until the day it would be discovered by one with the ability to unlock its true, and invaluable, function. Satisfied that its work was complete, the cloaked figure rose and stepped away from where it had hidden its charge. With a deep breath, the figure prepared itself for transportation, and with no more than a slight mental effort was whisked away through space in a flurry of muted colors, scintillating briefly like some low-flying aurora before leaving the night as still and quiet as it had been previously, the whipping winds of the hills drowning out the faint low humming of the device's power at work.

* * *

><p>The windows of Gryffindor tower were unkind to the tired students of the house. The panes of glass seemed positively impatient for the dawn, and took the very first sliver of light as a signal to begin streaming radiance into the beds and eyes of the sleeping Gryffindors. Harry tried in vain to block out the encroaching dawn with pillows, blankets, anything, but the damage was already done, and finally he sat up, defeated.<p>

"Erm? Wuzzat?" Ron's body murmured from somewhere beneath a pile of blankets. Harry froze, one arm in his robes, but his friend remained asleep. Lucky git, Harry thought to himself as he finished dressing and descended to the common room.

"Morning, Harry," Hermione said from one of the tables near the fire. Harry waved back at her silently, one arm occupied by digging the sleep out of his eyes. He let out a cavernous yawn and sank into the chair across from her.

"How are you even awake?" he asked. "It feels like dawn just got up early to play a trick on us and is already back asleep."

Hermione smiled slightly, finishing a sentence at the bottom of a crowded-looking scroll before rolling it up gingerly. "I was just up early to finish an assignment for class; it was too noisy last night to get it done. Congratulations, again, by the way."

"Thanks," Harry said. "I feel bad about Cedric though. He looks like he had a pretty rough time of it."

"Do you think the second task will be any easier?"

"Oh, definitely," Harry said with a wave of his hand. "Mermaids are going to steal Ron, but this time I know exactly where they'll be holding him and I won't have to stress myself out trying to figure anything out. I should probably give Diggory a heads-up, though, he's the one who told me about it the first go-around."

"Back up a second," Hermione said, raising one eyebrow. "_Mermaids_ are going to steal _Ron_?"

"Yup," he said with a nod. "They hide him at the bottom of the lake, I need to figure out a way to breathe underwater long enough to save them."

"And?" Hermione pressed, looking interested at the prospect of learning some new piece of magic.

"Gillyweed," he replied. "Neville's got a book on magical plants, he's going to be the one that tells me about it. Dobby can steal me some from Snape's office."

Hermione's lips became pursed at this. Harry shrugged.

"Well, I'll pay him if that's what he wants, but it's not like he doesn't owe me a few favors, is it?"

Hermione said nothing, but her expression softened. After a few seconds, she spoke up again.

"So are you going to talk to Dumbledore today?"

"If I can find him," Harry said. "I'm not sure what the gargoyle's answering to these days."

"Well, I'm glad you're letting him into the loop," Hermione said. "Hopefully he'll have some ideas about how we can capitalize on this."

"Hopefully he can get an Auror out to where Wormtail's got Voldemort now and put an end to him," Harry said grimly. He knew it was impossible of course. With all of his Horcruxes still in place Voldemort was outside the reach of any true death.

"I hope so," Hermione said in agreement, waving to Harry before ducking out of the common room on her way to the Great Hall.

Harry tried his best, but was unable to catch so much as a glimpse of Dumbledore for the first half of his day. At lunch, he spotted him at the staff table, and even got a small wave out of him, but he was surrounded by other professors and Harry was unable to approach. And, of course, when he tried to follow the headmaster out of the Great Hall, he found that the old man had somehow outpaced and evaded him. He wondered if there were some passages even the Marauder's Map didn't show. Then again, Dumbledore was one of the people who could Apparate into and out of Hogwarts. Harry had a soft chuckle at the thought of Dumbledore utilizing his great powers as headmaster to zip around the castle more efficiently.

It wasn't until that night that Harry got another chance. He raced out of his last class for the day, heading towards the spiral staircase that led to Dumbledore's tower. He stopped at the gargoyle, panting and out of breath. The halls were still fairly unpopulated, as many of the other classes were still in session.

"Um…lemon drop?" he asked, somewhat uncertainly. The gargoyle remained unmoving and impassive.

"Oh! Um…Cockroach Cluster?" The gargoyle, if anything, looked more bored than it had previously.

"Chocolate Frog?" Harry asked, almost apologetically. With a faint grinding sound, the gargoyle slid sideways to reveal the stairway up to the Headmaster's chamber. Harry rushed forward, but he stopped himself with his foot up on the first step, his mind racing. Was this really the correct choice?

Here he was, on his way to see the man he believed was going to help him, going to fix all of the wizarding world's problems and set everything right, and he was listing off candy names like a child. Harry retracted his foot from the step and leaned back against the opposite wall, eying the stairway to the headmaster's office almost distrustfully. To use the knowledge and advantage Harry had gained to its fullest extent would require difficult choices and, more than likely, a severe effort at unifying aspects of the wizarding world that seemed intent on ripping each other to pieces. Dumbledore was a vocal proponent of the unity of wizards, but how much had he accomplished?

As an educator, certainly, no doubt countless witches and wizards had passed out from Hogwarts' doors into the wider world with their minds more tolerant for the presence of Dumbledore, but molding future generations was well outside of Harry's available options at this point. And, Harry knew, Dumbledore's last best hope for the wizarding world involved setting himself up to be killed. Did the headmaster have the stomach to live through what was to come? Was there room for Dumbledore's brand of true selflessness in this fight, in this war? Harry knew that he would do anything at all to protect his friends, even if it meant laying down his own life. Would he be willing to lay down their lives as well? He knew Dumbledore would frown upon it, but in his heart he knew that the answer was yes. The situation was too dire, and too precarious, for mere sentiment to ruin all hope.

No, Harry was going to have to take the lead here. Like being the Auror he always hoped he would be, except this time flanked by enemies on all sides. He hoped that Dumbledore would understand, that the two of them could one day come to even terms about this. If Harry was successful, after all, it would be unnecessary for Dumbledore to die. Even Snape, Harry thought with extremely mixed feelings, could be saved.

"Um…never mind," he said to the gargoyle, who stared back at him accusingly.

"Oh, come off it," he hissed, and the gargoyle slowly slid back into place, shutting him off from the stairway to the headmaster's office and leaving him alone in the rapidly darkening hallway. Heaving a heavy sigh, as though he could simply shrug off the immense weight he had just shouldered for himself, he dug his Invisibility Cloak out of his bag. It was getting late, and there was no sense running into someone in the halls that could ask him awkward questions.

All the light seemed blue and gray, the color washed out of the world as Harry made his way through Hogwarts' winding hallways. He wondered if Filch was lurking about, or if Mrs. Norris was going to drop down on him from some hidden alcove. As if on cue, he heard footsteps approaching rapidly from around a corner. Stumbling to back up, the Invisibility Cloak actually fell back from his head, just as Artemius wheeled around the corner and came face to face with his floating head.

"You!" the Unspeakable hissed angrily, reaching for his wand. Not waiting to think of a reply, Harry pulled the cloak up over his head and took off down the hall, sprinting away from the wizard as fast as his legs could carry him.

"_Stupefy!"_ Artemius shouted, a red bolt passing dangerously close to Harry's legs. "_Stupefy! Stupefy!_"

Harry wheeled around a corner, the wall shuddering as another of Artemius' spells rammed into it. His mind was full of panic. He could just imagine the Ministry confiscating the Cloak, carting him off to answer a million questions he didn't have time to explain, and all the while Voldemort would be getting stronger, not to mention whatever else he was supposed to be preparing for. He just hoped that he had told Dumbledore enough for him to be able to carry on without him. But he himself was a Horcrux…Voldemort would be invincible if he was imprisoned in the Ministry while the Dark Lord was running free.

"_I need a way out of this…_" he thought frantically to himself. "_I need to escape!_"

And there it was. As he rounded another corner, there was a familiar door set into the stone of the wall, where it had never been before. Harry recognized it immediately, even in his panicked state, and threw himself mightily against the heavy door, pushing it open and slamming it shut behind him.

"I REALLY NEED him not to get in here!" he shouted aloud to the Room of Requirement. The Room, of course, offered no reply, but there was no black-cloaked Unspeakable banging down the door behind him, so for the moment at least, Harry felt he was safe, and ventured into the room a little more. What he saw made his mouth fall open slightly.

On a raised dais, in the center of the room, stood a vertical circle of metal. The edge of the ring was inscribed with many symbols, evenly spaced, seven of which glowed with a faint radiance. The collection of glyphs seemed oddly familiar to Harry, as though he had read about them once before, long ago, and was only now reminded that he had ever seen them at all. He realized they must be buried in the memories and information Merlin had placed inside his mind. He looked around for some other device or indication, but the Room remained empty except for the gate. Harry stepped forward, his steps sounding without echo in the still room. He was nearly ten feet away from the standing circle when Merlin snapped into view, the image of his person snapping together with a soft noise that sent Harry leaping backwards.

"Don't bloody do that!" he shouted, angry with himself for being so bowled over.

"Greetings," Merlin said. His voice sounded strange, somewhat tinny. "If you are here, that means that humanity has come a long way, stepped to the very threshold of its destiny in the universe."

"What?" Harry said, puzzled, but Merlin didn't even stop to acknowledge that he had spoken.

"Your entry into this chamber means that your genetic code has advanced to a level that allows you to interact with our technology on a useful level. Perhaps your people have already begun colonizing other worlds."

"Wait a minute," Harry said, stepping forward while Merlin turned to gesture at the Stargate. As he raised his arm to point at the metal circle, Harry tried to touch him on the shoulder, and gave a knowing smile when his hand passed right through the image of Merlin.

"This gateway connects directly to Yggdrasil, the last great construction of the Ancients, in the last days before our departure from this plane. In it you will find knowledge, defenses against those who would threaten you, vessels to carry you from star to star, and all the collected secrets of the Ancients."

"This room was placed here by none other than I, Merlin. I allowed it to grow within the structure and magic of your great school, to observe and mimic your strange powers, and to await the time when one with the proper genetic advancement would enter and claim their place as the Heir of the Ancients."

Harry took a step towards the gate as the outer circle began spinning. He stared at the empty space in the center of the ring, trying to see anything like the strange pathway he had witnessed in the Death Chamber.

"Please step away from the gateway now," the Merlin hologram intoned.

"What?" Harry whipped his head around as the gate fully activated.

The burst of energy from the gate nearly knocked Harry off his feet. A great blue burst of bright light, like a plume of water after a meteor impact, was flung out of the gate, suspended for a split second in space before it collided back with the ring and formed a glowing, whirling, watery screen that stretched across what had only seconds before been empty space. Harry steadied himself, clenching and unclenching his fists nervously. In the Death Chamber the portal had merely formed a bridge way stretching into empty space. This was something entirely different. He stepped towards the gateway, tensed to jump away at any moment if another torrent of energy were to rocket out of the circle. He stopped when he was standing just over a foot away from the standing water. Reaching out with one hand, he traced along the cold liquid, marveling that his hand came back dry.

"I can't believe I'm going to do this again," Harry said, remembering his interminable trek through the vast darkness of time. Theoretically this gate would simply be sending him to another place, but would the experience be similar? He certainly didn't remember enjoying his little trip through the land of the dead.

"The Wraith. The Ori. The Goa'uld. Beware these threats to you and to your people. Use the knowledge we have given you, but do not allow yourselves to be consumed by it. Power is a dangerous thing, and those with power bear the responsibility of the effects that power will inevitably produce. Be mindful of this, and act not without thinking. Good luck." The merlin image snapped off like a light with a soft –_snap_-, leaving Harry alone by the luminescent pool of the Stargate.

"I guess there's no sense in postponing things, is there?" Harry said, tracing his hand back across the watery surface of the gate, watching as the ripples upset the surface of what could not possibly be water. Taking a deep breath, he steadied himself for a moment, then stepped cleanly through the gate, disappearing from the Room of Requirement altogether. After a few seconds, the blue light from the gate vanished as the liquid surface dissipated cleanly, leaving no evidence that Harry Potter was ever in the room at all.


	12. Chapter 12

**Harry Potter and the Veil of Time**

Chapter Twelve: Yggdrasil

By Cybergades

* * *

><p>The sensation of traveling through this gate was nothing at all like the one Harry had previously experienced. Where before there had only been the darkness and the quiet, so quiet and so dark that it was easy to lose track of how long you had been traveling, here there was light all around him, a great rushing tunnel of light that he could barely keep track off as it pulled him along. And where before there was only silence, so quiet you were afraid to disturb the peace with a thought, here there was a great whining scream, like he was a human fingernail being dragged across a cosmically vast chalkboard. It was like an acceleration without end, his stomach sinking lower and lower in his body until he was sure his body must be at least ten feet long, all floppy skin and terror holding himself together while his stomach steadfastly tried to vacate the premises entirely.<p>

The sensations were so intense that their sudden absence was almost as traumatic as anything they did. Harry suddenly found himself whole and back to reality once again, curled in a fetal position on a cold metal floor, having been apparently ejected there by the gate behind him, which gave one great _whoosh!_and fell silent, its duties discharged. Harry lay choking on the floor for several seconds before he realized that he wasn't breathing, and sucked in a great lungful of air, which quickly devolved into a frantic retching coughing fit.

Shivering with the cold of both gate-travel and the sterile room where he now found himself, Harry rose to his feet uncertainly. His stomach was nestled once again in his abdomen where it belonged, but it was quivering like a frightened animal, and as Harry blinked and stumbled it threatened at any moment to make a break for it, and to take Harry's dinner with it. Harry actually had to sit down again to avoid throwing up, seating himself on one of the steps leading up to the gate and taking deep breaths.

"Why the hell didn't you tell me about _that_, Merlin?" He hissed between gasps of air. The empty room offered no response on Merlin's behalf, and Harry simply remained on the steps, staring at the floor and panting until his body felt somewhat normal again and he was able to rise to his feet.

The chamber he was in housed only the Stargate, which now stood silently behind him, the seven symbols still faintly glowing. Harry noted that on the arch in the Death Chamber there had been a multitude of symbols, whereas this gate possessed only the seven. Perhaps this gate connected only to the one in the Room of Requirement? The room's features were muted, with dull metal walls and rounded corners, two small bars of light running along the walls at floor and ceiling level. There appeared to be two hallways branching off from the room in either direction, to the left and right of the Stargate. Harry looked from one to the other, but there appeared to be no indication as to where either of them led. Scuffing his feet on the ground for a few seconds, he finally shrugged and began down the rightmost passageway, trailing a hand along the cold metallic wall. The strips of light ran along the length of the hallway, providing the only illumination and giving the atmosphere a sense of coldness and sterility. The hallway turned sharply after a few dozen feet, continuing to a large metal doorway that appeared tightly locked and sealed. Harry stepped up towards the shiny portal, reaching out with a hand to brush along its smooth surface. Three huge bolts sealed the door to the walls, barring Harry's way forward completely.

"Now what?" the boy wizard sighed. He looked over his shoulder, thinking of the opposite passageway. What if it featured a similar locked door? Had Merlin sent him to a sepulcher instead of a salvation? With a lurch of fear, Harry wondered if he would even be able to reactivate the gate to return to Hogwarts. His rapidly darting eyes fell on a small panel of buttons, however, and he raced to it, covering the ground in two large strides and letting his eyes rove over the device. It was a display of runes he could not read, a language that was too ancient or simply too foreign for him to decipher, although superficially it seemed to resemble the runes he and the other Hogwarts students had studied (or not studied, in many cases). Reaching out with a finger, Harry tried pressing one of the illuminated buttons. Immediately a holographic interface like the one that had displayed Merlin's message in the Room of Requirements sprang to life, this time displaying a brightly lit marquee of indecipherable words across the doorway. Harry couldn't help himself, and took a startled step backwards before returning to the panel, muttering to himself as he tried to get the portal to relinquish the way forward. He tried pressing a few other buttons, with no results, until one caused a whirring sound to emit from the walls. With the labored sound of metal on metal, the three massive bolts began to retract from the walls, freeing the door from where it had remained sealed for Merlin only knows how long. With a final creak and the hiss of depressurization the door popped loose on its hinges, swinging outwards slightly as the air from inside the hallway rushed into the next area. Harry reached out with one hand and gently pushed on the door, which swung outward.

Harry had to shield his eyes from the brightness of daylight as the great door yawned open with a metallic groan. He stepped out into the midday sun of this strange new world, looking upwards towards the cloudless sky in wonder. A sun like Earth's hung in the sky, but next to it, a smaller and redder star burned as well, accounting for the radiance pervading the outer area. Harry appeared to have stepped into what was, or rather once was, a great metropolitan construction, with steely spires all around him stretching into the sky, magnificent towers of metal and glass catching the light of the two suns and reflecting it, until it seemed there were half a dozen suns or more twinkling in the air. But as Harry looked around him, he noticed signs of neglect, disuse and disrepair creeping in on the shining metropolis. What must have once been well-cultivated verdant areas were now overgrown, strange vines creeping across once-pristine streets and walkways, and massive trees left to grow for far too long, some of them poking branches through the window-panes of nearby buildings, others toppled over entirely onto structures around them. Thankfully the atmosphere was not all deathly quiet; Harry could hear a healthy breeze rustling the leaves of the plants, and in the distance, the warbling call of some kind of bird or other native life.

Moving further away from the gate room, Harry wandered the streets of Yggdrasil, occasionally poking his head into a doorway or window, only to find the buildings deserted, darkened, and dormant. He came upon a fountain of crystal clear water which bubbled merrily, its droplets forming a thousand shining points of light as they shot into the air and descended as sparkling rain on the pool below. Wondering how the device wasn't completely overgrown with algae or clogged with fallen leaves, Harry dared to taste a drop of the water caught upon his outstretched fingertip, and found to his delight that the water was crisp, almost effervescent. Harry was shocked that everything was as well-kept as it was, given that it didn't seem like anyone had lived anywhere in the city for hundreds of years at least.

Cautious of wandering too far, Harry remained close to the gate building, which seemed to be one of the only ones with working lights or other systems. He even ventured into one of the towers, hoping to find some sort of panel like the one that opened the first door, but he found only darkened hallways and sealed doors, with not a spark of life or power anywhere. The darkness of the abandoned buildings wasn't so much of a problem, however, as Harry found that his wand still functioned perfectly well even a world away from Earth, and he was able to generate his own light whenever his curiosity brought him somewhere the light could not reach. Still, he quickly grew tired of poking around in deserted buildings, and started to become frustrated with Yggdrasil as a whole.

"So where is everything, Merlin? What the hell is this place, a welcome center? An abandoned interstellar museum? Where's the help you said would be here?" Merlin offered no reply, and Harry felt a touch of despair creeping over him. Had Merlin been wrong? Had the Ancients simply died out without leaving a useful legacy behind? Harry had arrived too late, it seemed, only in time to marvel at the skeleton of a once-great people while he awaited the destruction of his own. Growing ever more downtrodden, he made his way back to the relatively centralized location of the gate building, crossing a mostly-overgrown square, tall tufts of grass bursting through the cracked roadways once so meticulously laid out.

Making his way back through the open door into the structure housing the Stargate, Harry walked past the gate, traversing the other hallway instead. He found himself faced with another door, similar to the one that had granted him access to the outdoors. And a similar lit panel awaiting his input. He struggled to remember which symbols had been successful at opening the door, and after one mishap where he managed only to set off some sort of high-pitched klaxon, Harry was able to get this door to swing open as well. Instead of revealing another outside area, however, this hallway seemed to lead deeper into the structure, into a darkened room. Harry stepped through the door, jumping at the series of loud clicks that echoed through the sizable chamber as various overhead lights flicked on at his entrance.

The room appeared to be a situation room or staging ground of some kind, designed to house dozens or maybe even hundreds of individuals at various terminals, readouts, and round tables. A host of illuminated screens popped on throughout the room, regaling Harry with tickers of unreadable information and flashing graphics. One of particular interest showed a model of some foreign solar system; judging by the binary star system at its center, Harry inferred that it was a map of local space, and hoped that the green cross hairs indicated on the holographic display represented the location of this place. Studying the map, he noted that there appeared to be numerous planets, all of which had some sort of note or description, as well as several other orbiting bodies, large asteroids or perhaps synthetic stations, scattered throughout the system. A series of colored lines connected the various points to one another, curving elegantly through the emptiness between planets as they all slowly rotated around the central suns. Occasionally a planet would move too far away from another, and the lines would shift slightly, cutting off access between some locations and opening between others. Harry tried to wrap his mind around everything the map represented; a completely foreign solar system, full of planets like Earth and its neighbors, planets never before witnessed by human eyes. Abruptly, however, the map dissolved away, leaving only empty air behind, until lines of blue light started to fill in that empty space as well, a holographic projection constructing itself line by line in front of Harry until it resembled a fairly rudimentary humanoid face, its eyes empty hollows, its mouth an impersonal tight-lipped gash.

"Um…hello?" Harry said, bracing himself to feel foolish once more in the face of a recording.

The face's mouth twitched open to reply, with a short, curt-sounding emission, but either the systems it used to project its voice were malfunctioning, or Harry had run into yet another language barrier.

"You're not a recording, are you?" Harry asked. The face responded with a rapid-fire series of statements and observations. It seemed to jitter around, changing its angles and proportions slightly as it viewed Harry from multiple angles.

"I can't…I can't understand what you're saying," Harry said. He realized he was speaking slowly, like trying to reason with a daft person, and felt stupid. Why would this thing be able to understand him any better if he spoke slowly, when he was still speaking a language from light years away? Still, Merlin had been able to understand him…

The face remained silent and still for a few seconds, before it began displaying more glowing runes. Harry held up his hands and shook his head.

"Yeah, no, I…yes, I've seen your language, but I can't read it anymore than I can understand you when you speak it." The face babbled at him, and Harry though he detected a hint of impatience somewhere in the electronic monotone of its synthetic voice. Harry felt a sharp pinch on the back of his neck, and whirled around to see an electronic arm clutching one of his hairs daintily.

"What the-?" he began, but the protrusion quickly retracted into a nearby wall, while the voice droned through some sort of explanation. It's voice turned up at the end, and it started at Harry plaintively, clearly asking him for _something_.

"I don't know what you want," Harry said half-apologetically, but unable to keep the impatience out of his voice. "Look, Merlin sent me? He said there would be stuff here, information or power or something, anything I can use to help my own planet."

The hologram chattered some more at Harry, before it deconstructed itself swiftly, the light stripping away until only empty space remained, and the flat white plane that seemed to emit the various holograms into the air dimmed. Harry sighed, leaning forward on the projector and glancing from mystery to mystery within the room. Slowly an idea dawned on him and his face cracked into a smile.

"If these symbols look so much like ancient runes…" he thought aloud. "Just maybe…but I'll need Hermione."

Walking to the door, Harry turned once and looked back into the chamber. So much information lay within, just out of his reach. Would he be able to figure it out in time to make use of it?

The gate stood silent sentry over the embarkation room as Harry entered. Glancing across the featureless walls, he saw no immediately apparent way to reactivate the gate, but he didn't let fear set in. Stepping back and rubbing the side of his head, he struggled to think, searching for some key piece of information Merlin had no doubt secreted away in his subconscious. Sure enough, as he focused his mind on getting back to Earth, he heard the grinding of machinery as the gate's outer ring began spinning. Not to be bowled over again, Harry took several safe steps backwards, and maintained his composure when the gate's energy erupted outwards. Was Yggdrasil able to read his mind? he wondered to himself. Just how powerful had the Ancients been? Taking a breath and wincing in anticipation of the cold, Harry plunged forward through the gate and into the howling tunnel of light.

The Room of Requirement was still empty when the gate deposited him back on its floor. Coughing and shivering, he took a few minutes to warm himself back up again before he dared to crack the door and check the hallways. His little excursion had lasted most of the night, he realized, and Hogwarts was now wrapped in the foggy half-light of dawn. With a small groan, Harry recognized that he was going to be unable to get more than a few minutes of sleep. Wrapping the Invisibility Cloak around himself, he swiftly wound his way up to the portrait of the fat lady, jumping at every corner, expecting to find Artemius or Filch leering about, searching for him. He wondered if Artemius would try to single him out tomorrow, perhaps even arrest him outright if he had the authority. He shuddered to think at what the rumor mills might produce if the Hogwarts student body saw him carted away by Unspeakables at breakfast. But Artemius had no proof, and even Snape's inevitable support would be insufficient to get Dumbledore to allow such a thing. Even outside the loop the headmaster could be very useful, probably more so than if he were brought fully up to speed.

Whispering the password to the half-asleep portrait, Harry slipped inside the deserted common room and crept up the stairs, avoiding the distinctive creaky step near the top of the staircase. He closed the bedroom door gently behind him, the soft creak of the hinges muffled by the rhythmic droning stores emitting from Ron's bed. Carefully slipping into his own bed, Harry soon drifted off into what was to be only a short nap, plagued with fitful dreams of the future's dark offerings. Voldemort's face hung over his slumber like a dark omen, flanked by the swimming terrors of the unknown, and it was almost with relief that Harry opened his eyes a few short hours later.


	13. Chapter 13

**Harry Potter and the Veil of Time**

Chapter Thirteen: Trouble at the Ministry

By Cybergades

* * *

><p>Something was wrong at the Ministry of Magic.<p>

Percy Weasley had realized it early on, although he hadn't had the nerve to say anything to anyone. It had started when his boss, Mr. Crouch, had stopped coming into the office entirely, corresponding with Percy entirely through owl post. That was a bit strange, he had thought, but it also meant that a great deal of responsibility was being given to him, and if he could carry out the wishes of his superior, it could only mean good things for his Ministry career. You always have to put yourself in a position where good things can happen to you, he often told himself. But that had only been the beginning of it.

Percy brushed the wrinkles out of his coat as a chill London wind whipped down Whitehall, blowing the hats off a few heads and upsetting a handful of birds still perched sleepily on the streetlights. Percy shivered only slightly, stuffing his hands deeper into the sleeves of his robes as he strode purposefully towards the phone booth that would grant him access to the Ministry. Sliding the door closed behind him, he gave one last look at the Muggles walking up and down the street before he nonchalantly punched '62442' into the phone, jerking slightly as the booth began descending into the ground.

The Atrium of the Ministry was bustling with the morning foot-traffic of dozens of wizards and witches arriving from their homes. The fireplaces of the Floo network flared regularly as they deposited their passengers onto the slick-looking black tiles of the Ministry, while outside the subterranean windows, the magically-displayed sky was grey and tumultuous.

"More personnel interviews today, Percy," a voice piped up from behind the scribe. Percy turned around to see another of the clerks from Crouch's department, a small moon-faced man named Marnaeus Vega.

"Morning, Marny," Percy responded. "Personnel interviews, eh? For that _Prophet_ fluff piece?"

"That's the one," Marnaeus replied, bobbing his head up and down. "Don't know why that Skeeter woman needs to be so thorough about everything. You think she'd just get some talking points from Fudge and be on her way. It's not like she's ever been interested in the truth before."

Percy shrugged. "As long it doesn't waste too much time, I suppose there's no harm in it."

Still, Rita Skeeter had been in and out of the Ministry for a few days now, calling Ministry employees one by one to Cornelius Fudge's department, and she could be seen at all hours, murmuring conspiratorially with the portly Minister. Percy couldn't place his finger on it, but he was sure…

Something was wrong at the Ministry of Magic.

* * *

><p>To Harry's amazement and good fortune, Artemius appeared to be either playing it close to the vest, or had a more apt understanding of the situation than he had originally thought, because the man neglected to confront Harry the following day, or to do more than lurk around the Great Hall scowling at students and teachers alike. Harry thought that Artemius must have known that Dumbledore would never allow him to be taken on mere accusation, and the outcry that would arise if the Unspeakable utilized his authority anyway would probably generate far too much negative attention to be worth it. So Harry counted himself lucky, and watched his step for the next several days. Because of this, he was unable to get Hermione or Ron to the Room of Requirement, and so his idle thoughts grew increasingly preoccupied with visions of Yggdrasil. Not so preoccupied, however, that he didn't notice the two of them making eyes at one another, or talking loudly about the approaching Yule Ball. It looked like they might be able to get an early start on the romance Harry knew lay in store for them.<p>

Where once the halls of Hogwarts would slowly empty out as Christmas time drew nearer and nearer, now they remained packed with throngs of students, all staying at the boarding school for the holiday season to participate in the Yule ball. Harry's mind, however, was far from thoughts of the dance. He was focused on when he would be able to return through the Stargate to Yggdrasil, to get Hermione to help him decipher its secrets. And he was concerned with how he was spending his time here, at Hogwarts. He was slacking his way through classes he had already passed, while Voldemort continued to bide his time. He had made up his mind that he was going to stick around for the Triwizard Tournament, in order to save Cedric Diggory and potentially cripple Voldemort's growing power, but after that he couldn't think of a reason to come back to Hogwarts for his fifth year. Truancy on that scale would probably put the Ministry after him, especially since his plans called for quite a bit of underage magic, but Harry didn't seem prone to making friends at the Ministry of Magic at any rate. In his wandering thoughts he found himself considering the parts of the wizarding world he had never seen, secret vestiges of power scattered and dissembled. Harry knew that if he could unite the power and resources of even a fraction of the wizarding community, combined with the vaults of power on Yggdrasil, there should be a fighting chance to fend off the threats Merlin warned him of.

To that end, Harry found himself considering Hogwarts' foreign guests much more closely than he had during his first fourth year. Viktor Krum, in particular, seemed like he could be a powerful potential ally. But how would he be able to break through the stern Seeker's hard exterior?

In the midst of one such reverie, Harry found himself wandering the snow-laced courtyards of Hogwarts, scuffing up great tracks of snow with his feet as he trudged towards a class he was growing increasingly late to. He rounded a corner, hopping over a low stone wall to skirt the pathway a bit, but was stopped cold by a flash of orange passing before his eyes. Looking up, he saw Ginny Weasley standing alone in the snow, her own progress towards whatever class she was late to stopped by their sudden encounter.

"Um…hi, Harry," she said in a soft voice.

"Hi, Ginny," Harry blurted out, aware of the growing warmth in his cheeks.

How could he have been so stupid? He had been so consumed with trying to save Ginny's life, along with everyone else's, he had failed to fully realize that she was right here, alive under his nose all this time. With a sudden rush of determination, Harry determined to set something right. It might not save any lives, but…

"Ginny, if you're not in a hurry-"

"No," Ginny replied, too quickly. "What's up?"

"Well, I was, uh…I was wondering if you'd like to go to the Yule Ball with me."

There was a moment, however brief, when Harry felt he had certainly screwed something up, had ruined his potential future with one hasty question. But then he noticed the soft pink flush spreading across Ginny's face, and saw the corners of her mouth tremble as she struggled not to overdo her excitement.

"S-sure," she stammered. "I'd like that, Harry."

"Great!" Harry said with a broad smile. "You can borrow Ron's dress robes, if you like."

Ginny paused for a moment, then burst into a fit of giggles as she remembered Ron's absurd-looking dress robes Mrs. Weasley had packed for him at the start of the year.

"I promise I won't do that to you," she said, but then her face fell. "Oh! I was already late! I'd better go!"

"Yeah, I'm probably going to catch hell, too," Harry said, reaching out and touching her shoulder gently. "I'll see you later, yeah?"

Ginny nodded, then dashed away, her robes billowing behind her in the winter wind. Harry watched her go, in no hurry, hoping that he was the cause of the lightness in her step. She turned back at the entrance to Hogwarts, catching him watching her go, and offered a small wave of her gloved hand. Harry smiled sheepishly, returning the wave before moving off towards his class. He had almost forgotten how warm she made him feel, how he could share anything with her, how he would do anything for her...and then inspiration was upon him, like a flash. Smiling with new purpose, he entered the castle, but turned down a different hallway, away from his class. There would be plenty of other classes he could go to, he reasoned. He needed to take care of this soon.

* * *

><p>Percy Weasley was slowly being entombed in a mountain of paperwork thrust onto his desk from one department or another. He eyed his ceiling nervously, well aware of stories of malfunctioning environmental magic causing a downpour on some poor wizard's desk and reducing six months' worth of forms and paperwork to a pulpy slush. He was the only one still working in Crouch's office, the other scribes and assistants off having lunch or on break, and so he had the office entirely to himself, with only the rhythmic scratching of his quill and the unobtrusive <em>tik-tik-tik<em> of a clock in the corner to keep him company. Which was, of course, just the way he liked it. Workplace socialization, he reasoned, was responsible for the loss of countless productive hours, even in an institution as disciplined and well-oiled as the Ministry of Magic. Percy Weasley would be the cleanest cog in the machine, and hopefully others would learn from his example, or, he hoped, the ones that kept the machine running would notice his pristine performance, and reward him accordingly.

"Still working, Percy?" Marnaeus' voice cut through the still air, causing Percy's quill-hand to jump several inches, leaving a long unsightly line on the quill. Sighing, he produced his wand.

"Yes, Marny, what is it?" Percy said in a forced voice, silently effacing the awkward blemish on his paper with a wave of his wand.

"Well, I've just been sent down from Cornelius Fudge's office, and I've been told to send you up for your personnel interview."

"They're even interviewing the assistants and scribes? " Percy asked, somewhat incredulous. Marnaeus Vega only nodded dumbly, a curious smile on his face. "How are we ever supposed to get anything done around here if we're constantly mugging for the presses?"

"It'll only take a few moments, Percy, nothing to it," Marnaeus said cheerfully. Percy raised an eyebrow, looking at the short man sidelong as he deposited his quill in the inkpot on his desk.

"What's gotten into you, Marny? Feeling alright?"

"Never better!" Marnaeus exclaimed gleefully. "Oh, that Rita Skeeter is really some woman, Percy. I wonder what she could ever see in a man like me…"

"Nothing, I'd wager," Percy said drily. Rising from his desk, he pointed his wand to the coat rack in the corner, which obediently sent his coat soaring through the air. "Later, Marny."

"Oh, you'll see, Percy!" Marnaeus called after the young Weasley. "You'll change your tune! It's wonderful!"

A wonderful time-wasting interview, eh? Percy pursed his lips, shaking his head to himself as he made his way towards the Minister's office. Ever more, he was certain of it.

Something was wrong at the Ministry of Magic.

* * *

><p>After setting his plan in motion, Harry practically sleepwalked through the rest of the day, his mind completely dominated by what he had planned for later in the evening. Unfortunately, that meant bad things for Harry, as Snape verbally berated him all through a double Potions class. Still, it was with an excited heart and crossed fingers that Harry made his way towards the Gryffindor Common Room that evening. Even as he approached, he could hear the commotion within, and the Fat Lady looked at him almost apologetically.<p>

"I wouldn't go in there, if I were you," she said.

"I'll be alright," Harry said, giving her the password and stepping through the porthole. He ducked immediately upon entering, however, as a shoe was flung viciously at the rapidly retreating form of Ron Weasley, who pushed quickly past Harry in a mad dash for the door.

"Make a run for it, mate!" Ron said over his shoulder. "She's gone completely mental!"

"OF ALL THE NERVE!" Hermione shouted from the center of the Common Room, which looked to be deserted except for her and Harry as Ron's footsteps retreated down the hallway. The other Gryffindors appeared to have wisely retreated to their rooms or to the Great Hall for dinner.

"What's up, Hermione?" Harry asked, looking concerned. She was standing with one shoe still in her hand, poised to fling it at the first Ron Weasley that crossed her path. "You feeling alright?"

"Do you know what he did?" Hermione spat, pacing back and forth as she fumed. "Did you have anything to do with this?"

Harry shook his head. "No, what happened?" he lied.

"Ron got Dobby to come in here and ask me to the Yule Ball for him. He even dressed him up like a Christmas elf and had him sing some stupid song."

"Sounds adorable," Harry said with a shrug. Everything was going perfectly.

"Adorable? He convinced the poor thing to debase himself like a performing animal, and to top it off he didn't actually have the guts to ask me to the ball himself? It's pathetic, it's terrible, it's…" She dropped the shoe, but continued pacing, clenching and unclenching her fists as she searched for more terrible things to call Ron.

"Hey, I'm sure he didn't mean anything by it," Harry said. This part was delicate; he had to make an effort towards reconciliation, but he couldn't overdo it or everything would be ruined.

"Didn't _mean_ anything by it?" Hermione said. "So he just asked me to the Yule Ball on a lark, did he?"

"That's not what I meant!" Harry protested. Brilliant! He hadn't even meant to be misinterpreted like that.

"Whatever," Hermione said, tossing her head contemptuously. "I'm going to the library for a while. If Ron comes crawling back and wants to apologize, tell him that I'm literally anywhere else."

As she stormed off, Harry felt a legitimate pang of guilt run through him. It was cast aside momentarily, however, when Dobby appeared in the Common Room with the distinctive –_snap_- of House Elf magic.

"Did Dobby do a good thing, Harry Potter?" Dobby asked, wringing an elbow-length glove he was carrying in his hands. Judging from the stretched fabric of the glove, Harry reasoned that he had been wearing it as a hat.

"You were perfect, Dobby," Harry said, patting the diminutive house elf on the head. Dobby's massive eyes lit up, but he still seemed unsure.

"But Miss Granger is so mad at Ronald now," Dobby whispered. "This was a rather cruel joke, Harry Potter."

"They'll forgive each other," Harry said. "But in the meantime, this is exactly what needs to happen, Dobby. I promise someday I'll explain everything you're helping to accomplish right now."

"Oh, that wouldn't be necessary, Harry Potter," Dobby said cheerfully. "Dobby is happy to help."

"Thank you, Dobby," Harry said. At that moment, Hermione would be storming into the library to try and take her mind off this latest insensitive exploitation of the house elf population. And Harry knew that someone would be watching her, as he had been for some time. If Viktor Krum was any sort of intelligent, he would recognize this as the perfect chance to make his move. In her anger, Hermione would realize that taking Ron's sports hero to the Yule Ball would make the perfect revenge. The pangs of guilt returned, however, and Harry hoped that he hadn't sown the seeds of any permanent gap between his two friends. Being an evil mastermind, he decided, was entirely too stressful for him.

* * *

><p>"Come in, Percy, dear," Rita Skeeter said as Percy rapped softly on the door to Cornelius Fudge's office. He entered, shutting the door behind him, and stood with his hands in his robes, looking around the room awkwardly. Cornelius Fudge was seated behind his desk, looking bored and somewhat sleepy, while Rita Skeeter was sitting on the edge of the desk, one leg crossed over the other one, looking at Percy expectantly over her glasses.<p>

"Mr. Fudge, sir," Percy said with a bow of his head. Fudge waved him off with one pudgy hand, sighing and leaning back in his chair. When Percy looked confused, Rita was quick to beckon him forward.

"Come in, sit down," she said, gesturing to a chair that had been placed before the Minister's desk. "You'll forgive the Minister of course. We've been conducting the interviews for days now, and he doesn't have the journalist's knack for tolerating such drudgery."

"Well, I won't take up too much of your time," Percy said. "I have to get back to work soon anyway, or I'll get much too far behind, and-"

"Of course, Percy, darling," Rita Skeeter said, holding up a hand to silence the young wizard. "Tell me, Percy, why do you enjoy working for the Ministry?"

"Well, it's good to be a part of something greater than yourself, you know?" Percy said. "Working here, I feel like I'm really working towards making a better world for wizards."

"You'd like to be a part of something great, Percy?" Rita said, standing up from the desk. Percy nodded as the reporter walked towards him, placing a hand on either arm of the chair and leaning towards him.

"That's good, Percy. You shall." Percy found that he couldn't take his eyes off of the Skeeter woman, as though she was the most entrancing beauty he had ever seen. His vision grew blurry on the edges as he stared at her face, and his sight became slightly clouded, softened, muted with light pinks and pastels.

"That's it, Percy. Do you see how good it feels to serve?"

"It feels…good to serve," Percy said lackadaisically. Vaguely he was aware of Rita unbuttoning her blouse, pulling open her clothing to reveal a strange metal harness surrounding her torso. A gem glowed in the center of the harness, just over her naval.

"Stand up, Percy. Stand up, and you will receive the honor of becoming a Jaffa in our service."

A Jaffa, Percy though. That sounded so wonderful. And to be in the service of someone so strong, so beautiful…

How could he have ever thought something was wrong at the Ministry of Magic?


	14. Chapter 14

**Harry Potter and the Veil of Time**

Chapter Fourteen: The Yule Ball

By Cybergades

* * *

><p>Christmas Eve came to Hogwarts silently, in the night, Jack Frost creeping around the windows of the highest towers and leaving a small border of his namesake on every panel. When Harry awoke, he was even certain there was a thin curtain of ice on the lenses of his glasses, but if that were so, his breath melted it away by the time he cleared the sleep out of his eyes enough to get a second look.<p>

Ron and Hermione had not spoken to one another for several days. Ron, for his part, was furious that Hermione wouldn't even allow him to try and defend himself. It was frustrating even for Harry, watching Ron struggle to explain away something that wasn't even his fault to begin with. There had been a period of suspicion, wherein Ron had questioned who Dobby would have agreed to do such a thing for, but Harry was able to deflect by pointing out that they weren't even sure it was Dobby who had done it, playing into Ron's most-harmless racism by pointing out that house elves looked more or less indistinguishable from one another.

Hermione, on the other hand, had been spotted more than once in the Hogwarts hallways talking with Viktor Krum, and although she hadn't told Harry or anyone else, Harry was sure that his plan had worked, and that the pair would be going to the Yule Ball together. He found himself being late to class more and more often, and would spend some evenings wandering the halls, thinking idly of the Room of Requirement. But any time he thought visiting the room if requirements and maybe popping over to Yggdrasil for some exploration, a crowd of students would come marching around the corner, or one of the Professors would call out his name to pull him aside and tell him that they had noticed him slacking in his studies.

The Great Hall was redolent of the Forbidden Forest, as half a dozen great dark green trees had been planted in all corners of the room, strewn with golden bunting and threatening to envelop or smother any student that passed too close. Poor Colin Creevey actually had to be helped out of a tangle of branches after a passing group of students had accidentally pushed him into the thick growth of wood. The atmosphere all around was festive and excited, which made Harry's often-pensive and solitary moods all the more strange to his friends and classmates.

"I don't know why you're always moping about," Ron said at breakfast Christmas Eve. "You've got a _perfectly fine_ date to the Yule Ball." Harry winced; Ron had not taken the news that Harry was going to the Yule Ball with Ginny very well, and only some very deft verbal maneuvering on Harry's part had preserved their speaking relationship ("Would you rather she go with someone else?" had formed the crux of his argument, and it was most likely only the fortuitous appearance of Crabbe and Goyle, on the way to perform some thuggish mischief, that had saved Harry there).

"Ron, you could get a date easy, mate," Harry said. "You just need to ask somebody. Try one of the Patil twins, I'm sure they'd love to go with you."

"Tried it," Ron said with a sickened palor to his face. "They brightened up at first, but it turns out they were only hoping one of them would get to go with you."

"Look at it this way, mate," Harry said, reaching for any sort of consolation he could offer. "If you don't go to the ball, that means you don't have to wear your dress robes, doesn't it?"

Ron stared at him for a moment, and Harry held a stiff smile, waiting for any sign of acknowledgement or emotion on his friends' part. After a few seconds, Ron shrugged, nodding his head slowly.

"I reckon that's true," he said with a sigh. "Even if I got _Fleur_ to go with me I'd do nothing but embarrass myself in that hideous gown."

"If you really want to go," Harry said around a mouthful of eggs, "try the Patils again, but this time, ask one of them when the other one's not around. If they don't have dates yet, I can guarantee you they'll be itching for someone to ask them. My money's on Parvati as your safest bet."

Ron nodded glumly. Harry patted him on the back as he rose.

"Let me know how it goes later, mate."

"If I hang myself over this travesty, read something beautiful at my funeral," Ron called after him.

Harry was overjoyed that the Christmas holiday meant an end to classes, because it would give him a chance to finally get back to the Room of Requirement. He made his way through the upper hallways, tying to think about how badly he _needed_ to get to the Stargate, when wheeling around a corner, he found himself face to face with Mad-Eye Moody. Barty Crouch Jr., that is, he corrected himself mentally. The professor's eye rolled wildly in its socket as he observed Harry, sniffing loudly.

"Potter," he said by way of greeting. "Where are you off to in such a rush?"

"I was just going to the library," Harry said, thinking on his feet. "The second Task is coming up, you know, and I'm still not exactly sure what my plan is."

"Library's the other way," Mad-Eye said, as though giving directions to a lost stranger. "But of course you knew that."

"Oh, right, of course," Harry said. "Sometimes your feet, you know, they just take you somewhere else while you're thinking, and-"

"What are you thinking about?" Moody asked, his eye fixed on Harry like it was trying to bore into his skull. "Can't have any distractions flitting about in your head during the Tournament, not if you want to have any hope of winning."

"I'll keep that in mind, sir," Harry said, trying not to seem so eager for this conversation to be over.

"I know it's not my class you're thinking about, Potter. It seems like I can't even get you to think about Defense class when you're in it, I can't imagine you're stalking the halls worrying about curses and dark magic."

"I'm not worried about my Defense Against the Dark Arts class, Professor. I'm sure I'll do very well on the exams. Or I would, if I wasn't exempt, because of the Triwizard Tournament."

"Oh you do, do you?" Moody said, his eye rolling crazily. "Think you can stand up to a wizard throwing Unforgiveable Curses at you, do you?"

"I do," Harry said plainly. He knew he should defer, play dumb, bow and scrape until the time was right, but it irked him that he had to allow this imposter to roam the halls of Hogwarts, and his temper slipped off its tight leash for a moment.

"You do?" Moody crowed. "If I were to Curse you right now, you could just shrug that off?"

"Professor, you can cast any Curse on me that you feel is necessary, and I'm sure I'll manage."

"You might not pay attention in class, Potter, but I think even you know there are some curses you can't just 'manage'."

"You're talking about the _Avada Kedavra_, sir?" Harry said.

"Of course, boy!" Moody said, somewhat incensed. "I'm sure there are a hundred Dark Wizards out there who would jump at the chance to lay a Killing Curse on the Boy Who Lived!"

"I don't think so," Harry said, playing up his nonchalance. "I'm sure Voldemort wants to kill me himself, I'm sure he'd be furious if he found out someone else had finished the job for him.

The two stared at each other for a long moment, while words went unspoken between them. Harry could feel Crouch poised on the precipice of revealing himself, wondering if Harry already knew and was simply trying to goad him. Harry was struck with the absurd thought that if he exposed Crouch now, Ron probably wouldn't have to worry about people noticing that he didn't have a date for the ball.

"If that's all, sir," Harry said, "I'll be going to the library now."

"That's all," Moody said. "Be careful out there, Potter."

"Oh, don't worry about me, sir," Harry replied with a smile. "Besides, I'm sure you've got your eye on me."

* * *

><p>The sun blazed out its last few feeble rays of light through the windows of Harry's bedroom before surrendering entirely to the coming night. Harry stood in front of a mirror, turning this way and that in his stiff dress robes and wringing his hands nervously. He hadn't been nearly this nervous last time. Would he have been as giddy if Cho Chang had agreed to attend the ball with him his first time through he wondered?<p>

The door behind him swung open, and Harry turned to see Ron, who offered a weak smile and a wave before going to his trunk to produce his frayed and frilly dress robes. Harry broke into a grin.

"Alright, Ron! Found yourself a date?"

"Padma Patil," Ron said, looking like he was going to be sick. "Oh, Harry, I was so nervous, I thought she was Parvati, it's a miracle I didn't blow it completely!"

"You did good, Ron," Harry said. "Have you seen Ginny?"

Ron's lips thinned slightly, but he nodded. "She's downstairs, waiting for you no doubt."

"Well I'll leave you to get dolled up," Harry said with a wicked smile. "See you at the Ball?"

"For better or worse," Ron said with a sigh.

Harry shut the door behind him and descended the spiral stairs towards the Common Room, his heart dragging itself up towards his throat. When at last the Common Room came into view, he stopped on the second to last step, his breath momentarily lost.

Ginny Weasley stood near the fireplace, her hands folded in front of her neatly. She was dressed in robes of pale green, unadorned and simple. To the random passerby, Harry supposed she must look somehow poor or lacking, but in his eyes she appeared as radiant as a queen. Her hair fell over her shoulder in a braid, a simple golden clasp the only sign of ornamentation or opulence in her attire. She turned, looking up as he stepped off the stairs, and her face broke into a smile that melted Harry where he stood.

"Harry!" she said as he approached her. They embraced, only a little awkwardly, and she felt the fabric of his dress robes.

"Classy, you look really nice," she said.

"Yes, erm, well, you…yes," Harry stammered sheepishly. Ginny dissolved into a fit of giggling.

"Well, thank you, Mister Potter. I didn't realize such eloquence was one of your talents," she said, giving him a low curtsy and grinning mischievously.

"My talents just never stop emerging, I guess," Harry said, trying not to turn redder than Ginny's hair.

"Where's Ron? I want to get a good look at him in his dress robes," Ginny said, standing on her toes to peek over Harry's shoulder.

"Oh, come off it. If we laugh him out of the Common Room he'll just hole up in the bedroom all night, we want to at least get him down to the Great Hall before you tear him down."

"I'm sad he and Hermione aren't going together. It was actually sort of sweet, what he did for her. The song was pretty awful though."

"Well, I'm…sure he wrote it in a hurry, and could have done a much better job," Harry said. It wasn't true. He was pretty sure the silly little ditty he had convinced Dobby to sing was probably the best he could come up with. Of all his emerging talents, burgeoning songwriter wasn't one of them.

"Still, she shouldn't have gotten so angry," Ginny said, crossing her arms.

It's a good thing she did, Harry thought to himself. Her short fuse about house elves was the only thing he could think of to drive a wedge between her and Ron long enough for her to agree to go to the Ball with Krum.

"I'm sure they'll make up after Christmas. It's just, you know how Hermione is about house elves."

"Well, as much as I hate to agree with my brother, I think he's right on this one. The house elves love their work! I wish I could enjoy doing homework as much as they seem to enjoy cooking and cleaning, it would make life a lot easier."

Laughing, the two of them departed past the painting and towards the Great Hall. The students were gathering in the entryway of the school, the Great Hall closed off while they moved away the tables and Christmas trees and set up the stage for the Weird Sisters. Harry kept an eye out for Ron, but if he came down he did a good job of keeping to the sidelines and shadows. Harry hoped that he would be able to salvage something like a good time out of the night.

"Champions and their partners!" Professor McGonagall called from the Great Hall entrance. "This way, if you please!"

Gripping her hand tightly, Harry led Ginny through the crowd and into the Great Hall. It was much nicer than he remembered, even though he knew the decorations were exactly the same. Still, standing there with Ginny by his side, he started to have a hard time remembering what had made him so miserable the last time he did this. Turning to look over his shoulder, he caught Viktor Krum and Hermione coming through the door behind them, and gave her a smile and a wave. She looked as gorgeous as she had previously, and Harry hoped Ron hadn't seen her yet. Viktor looked stiff and awkward in his fur-lined dress robes, and he held his head up high and proud as he paraded into the Great Hall.

"Viktor, you know Hermione?" Harry said, smiling. This was it.

"Yes, well, he…he found me in the library one night," Hermione said. "His request sort of caught me off guard, but, well, here we are."

"Here we are," Harry repeated. He extended a hand towards Viktor, which the Bulgarian took with a raised eyebrow.

"Good luck on the second task coming up, Viktor."

"Dank you," Krum said sternly.

"Great, isn't she?" Harry said, unperturbed, gesturing to Hermione. "See you on the dance floor."

"Potter, enough chit-chatting!" McGonagall hissed. "Take your places, please, all of you!"

That was it, Harry thought. Nothing left to do now but hope everything worked out the way he hoped it would. He remembered that after the second task, Viktor had asked Hermione to spend the summer with him in Bulgaria. If the house of cards he had constructed stayed erect just a little longer, he would hopefully be able to win the appreciation and respect of the Bulgarian, and get himself an invite to the continent as well. That would make the perfect springboard for an exploration of the European wizarding community; there were sources of power outside the stifling grasp of the British Ministry of Magic, and Harry intended to put them to good use.

"Harry," Ginny whispered, guiding his chin with a finger so that he was looking at her. "Pay attention, we're about to start."

"Right, right," he said, taking a few steps in place to balance himself and extending his arms the way he had been shown.

"Ready?" Ginny said.

"As ready as I've ever been for anything," Harry said.

"Don't embarrass us," Ginny said, sticking the tip of her tongue out at him and winking.

Harry had not thought it possible for one night to be able to go so differently from the way he had remembered. He had had a notion of time travel the way the Time-Turners allowed it, where everything fit neatly into place, where time was one step ahead of the traveler. The gate had already irrevocably changed the way everything was playing out, and whirling around with Ginny in his arms under the lights of the Great Hall's sky, with the music and laughter in his ears, Harry thought that there was a good chance it was changing things for the better. He even managed to get Ron out on the dance floor once, although his friend's mood soured immensely when he saw Hermione and Krum dancing as well. At least, Harry thought, that means that he still cares about her. Hopefully he would be able to explain himself to them one day soon, and hopefully they would understand why he did what he did. In the meantime, however, he concentrated on the fleeting moment of happiness as it was offered to him, whirling carelessly in the eye of the storm.


	15. Chapter 15

**Harry Potter and the Veil of Time**

Chapter Fifteen: The Second Task

By Cybergades

* * *

><p>Like all good things, the Yule Ball eventually wound to a close, and Harry found himself lying awake in his bed, his heart pumping against his chest. It felt wonderful to be so excited about something again, and he savored every moment that he was able to spend with Ginny in the coming days. His schoolwork certainly didn't improve, as he grew later and later to his classes, stretching every stolen kiss as long as possible in quiet hallways and shadowy corners. The month of January whisked by in what seemed like one long hazy moment, and before Harry knew it he was eying the calendar and watching the 24th of February approach him, the date of the Second Task.<p>

The snows melted and the eggshell-thin crusts of ice that clung near the still shores of the lake disappeared entirely. Soon, only the very tops of the Hogwarts' towers remained cloaked in white, where the icy mountain winds had whipped the snows to a hard icy plaster clinging resiliently to the lonely banner tops of the castle.

Ron and Hermione had somewhat reconciled over the course of the weeks. Harry had convinced Ron that he should simply apologize for the stunt with Dobby, and when he protested that it had not been him, Harry had told him that it must have been some Slytherin's idea of a good joke. Hermione had taken the apology graciously, stonewalling him for only a few hours before the two began chatting again. Harry suspected that part of Ron's eagerness to get back in Hermione's good graces was because Ron wanted someone to talk to about the fact that Harry was dating his sister. He had remained remarkably supportive, given that they had nearly come to blows the last time he had gone out with his sister. Only his occasional and ill-concealed sullen looks betrayed that he was still bothered whenever Harry and Ginny held hands, or brushed against one another "by accident" or, God forbid, kissed.

Harry hadn't even bothered to take his egg to the baths, both because he already knew how to defeat this task and because he didn't relish the idea of running into Moaning Myrtle there. Cedric had dropped clues for him in passing, and Harry had appeared properly grateful. He also knew that it was Mad-Eye Moody who had told Cedric the secret of his egg, which meant that despite whatever suspicions may have arisen during their tense run-in in the hallways, Mad-Eye was still helping him to get through the Triwizard Tournament, which meant that Voldemort's plans had not changed, or at least he hadn't told Barty Crouch, Jr. if they had.

Harry shivered as he threw the blankets from himself on the morning of the 24th. The chill wind of winter still whipped through the window left ajar in the bedroom, and Harry hurried down into the common room to warm himself by a morning fire.

"Oi, Harry, ready for the big day?" Seamus Finnegan greeted him with a smile as he entered the room. The few other students milling about before breakfast gave him smiles and encouragements as well.

"I'm not too worried," he said. "Just going to do my best, you know?"

"Well, I've got ten Galleons saying that your best is going to be enough, Harry, and I'm not the only one. Don't let us down, yeah?"

Harry smiled.

"Tell me you'll be taking money from a Slytherin and I promise I won't lose."

There was a cheer at this, and after much congratulatory hand-waving and excited laughter Harry managed to slip out and down to Great Hall, where he ate a leisurely breakfast.

"Cool as a cucumber, eh Potter?" Malfoy jeered from the Slyetherin table. Harry responded with a dirty look and a rude gesture, and the Slytherins gave way to giggling and mocking voices. Harry tried his best to ignore them, and finished his breakfast in time to catch Ron and Hermione coming in.

"Wherever are you off to, then?" Ron asked. "Eaten already?"

"Yeah, but I'll sit with you," Harry said, turning on his heel and following the two back to the Gryffindor. He threw another extended finger behind his back to the Slytherin table, much to their vocal consternation.

"Just as ready as you were before, I suppose?" Ron asked when they had filled their plates with food.

"Maybe even more," Harry said. "This time there won't be anything trying to burn the skin off my bones."

"Ugh, Harry, disgusting!" Hermione exclaimed, dropping the well-cooked sausage she had been raising to her mouth. She looked down at the plate of them. "Well, now I need something else to eat."

"Oh, God, I'm not in the mood for this," Harry said, watching the scarecrow-thin figure of Artemius stalk into the Great Hall. "Look, I'll catch up with you guys later, or I'll see you after the task."

"Or maybe during the task?" Hermione said, casting a knowing look at Ron.

"Um…sure," Harry said, throwing them a small wave before leaving out the farthest exit from the Unspeakable that he could, hunching down and trying to keep himself unnoticeable.

Harry made his way up the twisting and turning stairways of Hogwarts until he found himself near the painting of the fruit bowl that led to the kitchen. Looking up and down the cavernous chamber to make sure there were no other students nearby, he reached up and gave the painted green pear in the bowl of fruit a light tickle. With an almost-disturbing high-pitched giggle, the painting opened to reveal the secret passageway to the Hogwarts kitchens.

The sound of running water drew Harry towards the kitchens, and the thick cloudy heaviness of the steam in the air clung to him like a hot moist blanket. The house elves were scurrying about the kitchen in mass, carrying as many soiled dishes as each could manage, or doubling up with a partner to haul some particularly enormous stew-pot towards the sinks, where another dozen house elves moved like army ants, scrubbing and splashing relentlessly as sudsy puddles of warm water gathered around them. Harry pursed his brow, shielding his face from any wayward spray as he looked around for the distinctive outfits Dobby chose to dress himself in. After a few minutes he saw the little elf, back bent under an enormous cast-iron pot, like a turtle wearing clashing plaid socks.

"Dobby, hey!" Harry said, catching the house elf's attention.

"Oh, Harry Potter, sir!" Dobby said. "Today's the big day!"

"Sure is. Here, let me help you with that." Harry reached forward to take some of the weight of the pot, but Dobby began chattering at him.

"No, no, Harry Potter, that will be quite unnecessary I think, I've got it, yes, I've got it right here, very good!" Harry finally backed away, strolling next to the elf as he made his way over towards the sink at a snail's pace.

"Dobby, I wonder if you might do me a favor."

"Oh, another favor? Dobby did so love that last favor, yes he did! So many festive new clothes for him to wear!"

"Right, well, I'm afraid this one isn't quite as fun, but it's _really_ important, okay?"

"Of course, Harry Potter, of course," Dobby said, reaching the sink at last and tipping the pot into a milky-white pool of soapy water. Harry had to jump back to avoid the great tepid wave that sloshed over the lid of the sink. A trio of house elves practically dove in after the pot, sponges in hand, while Dobby turned back to Harry.

"What do you need, Harry Potter?"

"Well, if you go to Snape's office, there'll be-"

"But Professor Snape's office is locked!" Dobby protested.

"Right, yeah, I, uh…I know it is," Harry said. Dobby's face slowly twisted into a mischievous grin.

"Oh, Dobby sees, Harry Potter, Dobby sees. You need him to go on a 'secret mission' is it?"

"Right, exactly! There's a bottle in there of something called 'gilly weed', do you think you could fetch it for me? I'd ask Snape to just lend me some, but there's that thing where he _totally hates me_, so I don't know how well that would go over."

Dobby straightened his back and threw Harry a sharp salute.

"Never fear, Harry Potter, Dobby won't let you down, no he won't!"

With a loud snap, Dobby disappeared from the kitchens, upsetting the nearby flow of house elves, who, startled, dropped the great cauldron they were hauling, which caused more elves to jump away, spilling their own plates and pans all over the floors. Harry winced with every crash of porcelain and cookware, but held himself back from offering to help. It wouldn't do him any good on this task to get mauled by indignant house elves trying to do their jobs. He was rescued from simply standing around awkwardly by the quick return of Dobby less than a minute later. Grinning, the house elf pressed the slick damp handful of gilly weed into Harry's hands, dipping into a deep bow with a flourish of his free hand.

"As you asked, Harry Potter, so Dobby has delivered. One handful of gilly weed for your noble purposes, sir."

"Thanks, Dobby, you're the best!" Harry said. He dug around in his pockets for a few moments before coming up with one mismatched mitten. "Um, here, for your trouble."

"Oh, lovely, thank you, Harry Potter! Dobby will try it on immediately!" Dobby kicked off one of his heinous-looking woolen socks, jamming the mitten onto his gangly foot like a misshapen moccasin. Holding the woolen sock in one hand, he thought for a moment before throwing it around his neck like a scarf.

"If there's nothing else, sir, Harry Potter, there are many dishes to be cleaned?" Dobby said, eyebrows raised expectantly.

"I wish I had something for you to do that's a bit more fun than dishes, Dobby, but I'll come visit you again soon, alright?"

"Alright, Harry Potter, sir."

Harry made his way through the bustling sea of elves, and found himself having to fend off tentative offers of the food for dinner, which he saw was already being prepared. The house elves were carrying the pots and pans away from the sink and immediately re-purposing them towards that night's meal. Harry shook his head, completely baffled by the workings of the house elf mind.

* * *

><p>Harry stood shivering on the shores of the lake, his own unvoiced prayers for warmth drowning out the murmuring crowd around him. The waters of the lake were choppy and crowned with gray-white froth, but Harry knew it was the murky depths beneath the small waves that he would soon be plunging. Nearby, the judges were all seated at their table, with Percy Weasley sitting in for Barty Crouch, as before. Harry noticed that Percy seemed even more stiff and unpersonable than ever, if such a thing were even possible. Next to him, Viktor Krum stepped back and forth from one foot to the other, rolling his neck and shoulders impatiently while Fleur stood with crossed arms, her lips pouted. Cedric caught Harry's eye, and each gave the other a small nod of acknowledgement. Ludo Bagman stepped up next to Harry, placing a hand on the boy's shoulder.<p>

"Alright, Harry?"

Harry nodded.

"Know what you're going to do?" Bagman added with a knowing waggle of his eyebrows.

"Got a pretty good idea," Harry said. "Easier than getting gold from a goblin, eh sir?"

Bagman opened his mouth to say something, but thought better of it and stepped away from Harry, eying him somewhat nervously as he touched his wand to his throat.

"_Sonorus_," he began, and then "Ladies and gentlemen, esteemed judges and honored guests! All the champions are here and ready, and so the Second Task will get underway. From my whistle, each champion will have one hour to enter the lake and retrieve that which was taken from them. No sense in wasting any more of their precious time, so on my count…one…two…_three!_"

Harry heard the whistle and forced his body to move, dashing with the other champions into the frigid lake waters. He saw Viktor's shape begin to change as he attempted his shark Transfiguration, and then he himself plunged into the depths, reaching into his robes and cramming the slimy wad of gilly-weed into his mouth. He forced himself to swallow it down, and fought off the sensation of drowning until it passed and he could feel the temporary gills forming on the sides of his throat. Kicking hard with his feet, he put some distance between himself and the other champions, trying to remember exactly where on the lake bed the merfolk village was where he would find the captives. His hands and feet, now webbed, did a good job of propelling him through the murky water, while the gilly-weed also helped his body cope with the nearly-freezing waters as he swam deeper and deeper into the black lake.

He was straining his eyes and ears, trying to find any sign of the merfolk, or to hear any notes of their haunting song, when the grindylows fell upon him. They came up out of the thick growth of weeds at the muddy lake bottom, tiny needle-like teeth bared and flanked by a host of frantic bubbles kicked up by their sudden movement. Harry had known that they were about, but hadn't realized he had wandered into so large a group of them. He fumbled awkwardly for his wand, kicking his feet to try and escape them, but even with the gilly-weed helping him the grindylows were much stronger swimmers, and quickly had him surrounded. One of them ventured too close, intent on seizing him by the wand-arm, and Harry lashed out with a kick, feeling his webbed foot sink into the grindylow's face with a satisfying muffled crunch that echoed in the murky waters. The little beast clutched its face as it floated backwards, while its companions bared their teeth at Harry and tried to set him off with false starts. Harry finally pulled his wand free from the sleeve of his robes and pointed it at the grindylows.

"_Relashio!_" he burbled. It had worked for him before, and as before, a great jet of steaming-hot water was flung from his wand into the midst of the grindylows, scattering them like papers in the wind. Harry lashed out again and again. Several of the ones he had missed with the first spell tried to charge him, but he beat them swiftly back with more of the scalding water, and their offensive quickly crumbled. Harry took this opportunity to paddle away from their patch of weeds, sending a few more spells into the undergrowth as a parting shot and driving the last few visible grindylows into hiding, their harsh-sounding foreign curses bubbling in his ears as they swore and fumed at him.

Harry could tell that the lake bed underneath him was sloping downwards, which was a good sign. He thought it would have been the easiest thing in the world to simply retrace his steps to where the merfolk village had been the last time he did the task, but in the murky darkness everything had a quality of drab sameness to it that made him constantly second-guess himself. Had he been turned around? Was he going to come up on the lake-shore, his gills gasping for water while his classmates laughed at his foolishness? But soon he heard them, their warbling melody carried through the water to him; the merfolk! Redoubling his efforts, Harry surged ahead in the water, down into the darkest depths of the lake until he found himself suddenly on the edge of the village, the rough-carved stone dwellings looming around him like slumbering krakens. He was approaching the village from a slightly different angle, evidence that he nearly did miss his previous route entirely, but he quickly made his way to the center of the village, where the greatest throng of merpeople were gathered, and where he could see the shadowy forms of the hostages floating like corpses just off the lake floor.

He was the first to arrive, as before. The choir of merfolk continued singing without even acknowledging him, but the other merfolk were bubbling and chattering to each other excitedly as he made his way to the hostages. There was Fleur's little sister, and Cho Chang, and Hermione, and…

"Ginny?" Harry bubbled to himself. Ron's sister floated with the other girls, all eerily serene as small pockets of air slowly escaped from their slumbering mouths. Harry was thrown off by this change of events for only a moment, and, feeling very clever, reached into his robes for the knife that Sirius had given him for Christmas. There would be no fumbling with lake-rocks this time, he thought, as he easily cut through the bindings holding Ginny to the lakebed. As he caught her with one arm, he saw Cedric approaching, the Bubble-Head Charm encasing him in a pocket of air. He gave a wave, pointing to Cho Chang, and then dragged Ginny away with him, swimming more awkwardly with the extra weight but making progress all the same. He got to the edge of the crowd of merfolk before he paused, thinking for a moment as they whispered and hissed around him.

He could easily get back to the judges and take first now. He knew that none of the hostages was in any real danger. But he also knew that he would take second if he saved Fleur's sister. And he was already poised to make connections with Viktor; why not extend that hand of friendship to Fleur as well? Besides, he didn't want to make any changes so drastic that they might influence Fleur's decision to marry Bill Weasley.

Slinging Ginny over his shoulder, he swam back to the hostages, while the merfolk clouded around him, chattering incessantly. By the time he got back to the center of the square Viktor had already come and gone, leaving only Fleur's little sister. When he reached out to cut Gabrielle's bindings, the merfolk tried to stop him.

"Only yours," one of them croaked. "No help."

"Oh, piss off," Harry said, shrugging off their grasp. They gripped him again, pulling him away from the enchanted girl.

"Only your hostage!" another one said.

"Look, Fleur's been attacked by grindylows, she won't be coming. I'm not going to just leave her here, so forget it," Harry said, trying to maintain a sound of desperation in his voice, like he truly believed that Gabrielle might die without his help. When one of the merfolk tried to stop him again, he batted the webbed hand aside savagely, and made as if to draw his wand. The merfolk clutched their stone-tipped spears, baring their filthy yellow teeth and growling, a warbling sound which sent up clouds of bubbles from their gilled necks, but they made no move to stop him again when he severed the little girl's bindings. Slinging Ginny and Gabrielle over both his shoulders, Harry gave the merfolk a nod and a wink and was off, kicking his way upwards as fast as he was able, the light around him slowly growing less dim as he grew closer and closer to the sunlight. He could feel the gilly-weed starting to wear off as he neared the shallows, and he struggled more and more to pull water through his gills. He finally broke the surface, feeling a dull pain as the gills sealed up entirely, and gasping as he put his lungs to use again, pulling great gulps of oxygen from the air as the crowd cheered and screamed.

Harry managed to take second place again, after he was once again awarded a bonus for his selfless actions under the waters. But his true prize, in his mind, was the breathless words of thanks he received from the tear-stained Fleur Delacour, a gratitude he valued more than gold.


End file.
